Frontiers of Architectural Research (2012) 1, 101149

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

www.elsevier.com/locate/foar

REVIEW

Progress in research on Chinese urbanization

Chaolin GUa,n, Liya WUb, Ian Cookc
a

School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

School of Politics and Public Administration, Suzhou University, Suzhou 215006, China
c
School of Social Science, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool L3 2AJ, UK
b

Received 26 November 2011; accepted 15 February 2012

KEYWORDS

Abstract

Urbanization;
China;
Policy;
Urban study;
Progress

This paper is a comprehensive study on the progress in research on Chinese urbanization. On the
basis of the concept and connotation of Chinese urbanization dened by Chinese scholars, the
paper systematically collects the research results on the issues concerning urbanization in China
from the different approaches of demography, geography, city planning, economics and history,
reviewing the process of research on Chinese urbanization made both domestically and
internationally. In this paper, the domestic studies fall into ve periods as follows: the initial
period of research on urbanization in China (19781983); the period with both domestically
constructed and borrowed theories on urbanization (19841988); the period of research on
leading urbanization factors and localization (19891997); the period with the research greatly
promoted by the government (19982004); and the period featuring ourishing studies on the
science of urbanization in China (2005 till today). In contrast, the overseas research on
Chinese urbanization can be divided into three periods: the period studying the history of
urbanization in China (before the 1970s); the systematic research on Chinese urbanization
(19701999); and the comprehensive research on Chinese urbanization (2000 till today). The
paper focuses on the key results of research on Chinese urbanization, including nine issues as
follows: the guidelines and road for urban development in China, the features of Chinese
urbanization, the mechanism driving the growth of Chinese urbanization, the process of
Chinese urbanization, the spatial patterns of Chinese urbanization, the urbanization in rural
areas in China, the comparison of urbanization in China and other countries, and globalization
and regional urbanization.

Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 10 62785186.

E-mail address: gucl@tsinghua.edu.cn (Gu Chaolin).

2095-2635/$ - see front matter & 2012 Higher Education Press

Limited Company. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. All rights
reserved.
Peer review under responsibility of Southeast University
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foar.2012.02.013

102

Chaolin Gu et al.
Moreover, the paper also summarizes key academic activities and important events concerning
Chinese urbanization, including documents, activities, and events of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of China (CPC), the State Council, National Development and Reform Commission,
the State Ministry of housing and Construction, the State Ministry of Civil Affairs, the State Ministry
of Science and Technology, and National Fund on Science, as well as major international
cooperation projects and conferences, concluding that the studies of Chinese urbanization have
distinct characteristics, that is, foreign scholars have conducted many studies on Chinese
urbanization, while the studies made by Chinese scholars in the eld mainly feature practicability,
and the interaction between Chinese and foreign scholars as well as the application of international
practice in China yield satisfactory fruits. However, there are also several problems in the studies of
Chinese urbanization, such as the ambiguity in understanding the concept of urbanization, the lack
of fundamental statistics, the emphasis on the research of actual phenomena and the neglect of
theoretical exploration, the focus on regional urbanization and the inadequate studies on national
and global background. China is in the transitional period from planned economy to marketoriented economy, making it hard for the direct introduction and application of the framework of
urbanization that emerged in developed capitalist countries.
At the same time, the domestic framework of urbanization created under the conditions of previous
planned economy is also inapplicable. Therefore, the promotion of Chinese urbanization faces a
series of theoretical issues. In comparison with the western developed countries and most developing
countries, Chinese urbanization faces more complicated backgrounds and more problems. The
theories and framework of urbanization developed in both developed and most developing countries
cannot be directly applied in China. So the research purpose in China is to form unique theories on
urbanization based on actual conditions and characteristics in this country and the research shall
adopt a multiple approach focusing on the impact of the progress of society, economy, population,
politics, culture, environment, technology and public policies on Chinese urbanization.
& 2012 Higher Education Press Limited Company. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. All rights
reserved.

Contents
1.
2.
3.

4.

5.

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Disciplines studying urban China. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Studies on Chinese urbanization in the mainland of China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
3.1. The initial period (19781983) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
3.2. The period with constructed and borrowed theories (19841988) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
3.3. The period focusing on key factors and localization (19891997) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
3.4. The period with strong governmental support (19982004) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
3.5. The ourishing period (After 2005 until now) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Overseas studies of Chinese urbanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
4.1. The period focusing on history of Chinese urbanization (before the 1970s) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
4.2. The systematic research on Chinese urbanization (19701999) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
4.3. Studies on framework of Chinese urbanization (after 2000) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Main achievements of Chinese urbanization studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
5.1. Policies of urbanization in China. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
5.1.1. Guideline on urban development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
5.1.2. Path of Chinese urbanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
5.2. Features of Chinese urbanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
5.2.1. Characteristics of Chinese urbanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
5.2.2. Level and speed of Chinese urbanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
5.3. Dynamics of Chinese urbanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
5.3.1. Mechanism for Chinese urbanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
5.3.2. Roles of the institutions and governments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
5.3.3. Impacts of reforms on Chinese urbanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
5.4. Processes of Chinese urbanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
5.4.1. Studies on processes of Chinese urbanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
5.4.2. Factors affecting Chinese urbanization processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
5.5. Space of Chinese urbanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
5.5.1. City-region relationship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
5.5.2. Urban forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
5.5.3. Urban spatial structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

Progress in research on Chinese urbanization

6.

7.

103

5.5.4. Urban fringe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

5.5.5. Semi-urbanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
5.5.6. Suburbanization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
5.5.7. Urban agglomeration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
5.5.8. Metropolitan areas and megalopolis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
5.5.9. Urban system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
5.6. Rural urbanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
5.7. Comparative studies of urbanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
5.8. Impacts of globalization on Chinese urbanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
5.9. Regional urbanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
5.9.1. Urbanization in the Pearl River Delta Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
5.9.2. Urbanization in the Yangtze River Delta Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
5.9.3. Urbanization in other areas in East China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
5.9.4. Urbanization in Middle China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
5.9.5. Urbanization in West China. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Major academic activities and important events on Chinese urbanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
6.1. The Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
6.1.1. Forecast and planning of designated cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
6.1.2. Report on the development of human settlement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
6.1.3. Changing from traditional agricultural country to industrial country . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
6.1.4. Sticking to the urbanization path with distinct characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
6.1.5. Speeding up the urbanization progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
6.1.6. The 25th CPP Bureau Collective Learning Session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
6.1.7. Promoting a healthy urbanization progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
6.1.8. Further reinforcing the urbanization path with distinct characteristics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
6.2. The National Development and Reform Commission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
6.2.1. Developing small cities and towns by actively encouraging an orderly migration of surplus rural labors . 125
6.2.2. Carrying out urbanization strategy to realize a harmonious urban and rural development . . . . . . . 125
6.2.3. Promoting actively the healthy development of urbanization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
6.3. The State Ministry of Housing and Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
6.3.1. Law of City Planning and guidelines for urban development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
6.3.2. Seminar on Chinese urbanization path and on urban development strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
6.3.3. Regional urban system and planning of urban distribution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
6.3.4. Urban development strategies in China in the new Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
6.3.5. Comparative analysis of Chinese urbanization and other countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
6.3.6. Seminar on urbanization and urban development strategy in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
6.3.7. The compilation of National Urban System Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
6.4. The State Ministry of Civil Affairs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
6.4.1. Forcast and Planning Designated Cities in China. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
6.4.2. Policies for Designated City Planning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
6.5. The State Ministry of Science and Technology and National Foundations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
6.5.1. Studies on urban development and urbanization technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
6.5.2. Key projects sponsored by the National Foundation on Philosophy and Social Sciences . . . . . . . . . 129
6.5.3. Key projects sponsored by National Natural Science Foundation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
6.6. International cooperation and important conferences on Chinese urbanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
6.6.1. Four academic seminars on Chinese urbanization paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
6.6.2. Second session of International seminar on Asian Urbanization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
6.6.3. Studies on population, employment and urbanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
6.6.4. Comparative Study on Urbanization from Bottom to Top . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
6.6.5. World Bank Senior Seminar on Chinese Urbanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
6.6.6. World Bank Research Project: Policies of Chinese urbanization19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
6.6.7. International Seminar on Chinese Urbanization Strategies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
6.6.8. Studies on Semi-Urbanization in China. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
6.6.9. International Conference on Chinese Urbanization and Transport Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Conclusion and discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
7.1. Features of studies on Chinese urbanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
7.2. Problems facing Chinese urbanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
7.3. Existing problems of studies on Chinese urbanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
7.4. Prospect of research on Chinese urbanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

104

1.

Chaolin Gu et al.

Introduction

Urbanization is an important social process of human society

in the 21st Century. People keep owing into cities, making
cities grow on a continuous basis. When people stop moving
to cities, urbanization will also stop accordingly. Typical
denitions on urbanization include: (1) Urbanization mainly
refers to the transformation process experienced by rural
population toward an urban life style, showing as the
increase of urban population, the expansion of urban
built-up area, the creation of landscape and urban environment with social and life style changes (Hiroshi Morikawa,
1989); (2) there are three meanings of denitions on urbanization: rst, urbanization accompanied by the increase of
proportion of urban population; second, urban growth, meaning the growth of urban population; third, urbanism, referring
to the urban lifestyle, social and behavior features extending
to the entire society (Pacione, 2003). Through a comparative
study on the urbanization process in different countries and
areas in the world, including rapid urbanization in the 20th
century, although there are many common features, different
countries adopt different paths due to their different cultural
background and development stages, resulting in divergent
social results (Berry, 1973a, b). Lampard (1964), McGee
(1971), and Friedmann and Wolf (1982) proposed a comprehensive analysis method, arguing that the urbanization actually reects the entire society and is a multi-dimensional
reection of physical, spatial, institutional, economic, population, and social characteristics.
In China, many complicated theories on urbanization and
numerous research results in the eld make the concept of
urbanization become more variable; even scholars majoring in
the same discipline produce different denitions on urbanization. In this paper, Chinese urbanization refers to the increase
of cities in number and the expansion of urban space, resulting
in the concentration of population in urban areas during
certain period of time, while at the same time the urban
material and spiritual civilization keeps extending to surrounding rural areas during the process and producing new spatial
patterns and landscapes along with the continuous changes of
regional industrial structure. This paper also focuses on the
progress of the researches on Chinese urbanization.

2.

Disciplines studying urban China

Urbanization is one of the social phenomena with the most

vitality and energy during the process of modernization and
ourishes across the entire world especially after the
Industrial Revolution, attracting many professionals in
human sciences, natural sciences, and engineering technologies to engage in cross-disciplinary studies in the eld,
including disciplines of sociology, demography, geography,
economics, history, and city planning, creating a disciplinary
group studying the issues of Chinese urbanization.
The urban studies were rst initiated by demographers
and sociologists in China. Li (1922) listed the population in
different ports and cities with a population of more than
100,000 according to the reports of the Customs in Overview
of Population Statistics in History which was published by
Shanghai World Book. Zhu (1926) recorded classied statistics on cities with a population of 10,000100,000 in Jiangsu

and Zhejiang and compared it with other places in China

and other countries in the world. Wu (1929) introduced the
approach of urban sociology fromwestern countries and
made initial explorations on urban economy, population,
areas and required control measures in urban sociology
which was published by World Book in China. Xu (1930)
published Population Issues in China, including a chapter on
Urban and Rural Population Distribution, evaluating the
proportion of urban and rural population in China, published
by The Commercial Press.
Hu (1935) published the rst isoline graph of population
density in China, revealing the basic rules of population and
spatial distribution of cities in China, and this was later
known as the Hu Huanyong Line. After that, some geographers started to study urban geography (Wang, 1935; Shen,
1937; Chen, 1943; Shen and Sun, 1947). After the Peoples
Republic of China was founded in 1949, geographers were
engaged in urban studies by integrating urban development,
among them Zhao and Bai (1950) made tentative studies
on urban geography in Nanjing. Huang (1951) studied the
development of port cities in China. Luo et al. (1952)
studied the site and construction of Baotou City by focusing
on several large scale projects, while Huang (1958) studied
the water supply for urban development in Xian and future
utilization and development of water resources in the area.
In spite of all these academic efforts, the overall urban
studies in the early period were sporadic, without study of
urbanization as a social process. After 1949 when China
established the socialist system, urbanization was taken as a
unique phenomenon in capitalist countries and had no
foundation to exist in a socialist country.1 Being affected
by this belief, before the 1970s, no Chinese scholar ever
studied Chinese urbanization (He and Wu, 2007).
Shortly after the adoption of reform and opening-up
policies in China since 1978, human geographers were
among the rst to study the general trend of urbanization
progress in the world and to summarize the lessons and
teachings on urbanization progress during three decades
after 1949, proposing to study the Chinese urbanization.
According to the literature, Wu (1979) published the rst
paper, Several Issues on Socialist Urbanization in China,
starting the professional studies in the eld in China.
Then geographers and city planners joined hands in
developing studies on Chinese urbanization in China.
Experts in city planning and authorities have taken the
studies of urbanization as an important and long-term
research eld. After 1982, the City Planning Division of
the State Ministry of Urban and Rural Construction and
Environmental Protection gathered geographers and city
planners in holding four seminars on Chinese urbanization,
and the rst one of them was held in Nanjing in December
1982. In the same year, the rst Seminar on Urban Development Strategy was held in Beijing, with the support of the
Ministry of Urban and Rural Construction and Environmental
Protection, the Chinese Society for Philosophy of Nature,
1

At the rst academic seminar exploring the issue of Chinese

urbanization path held during 610 December 1982 in Nanjing, some
participants believed that urbanization is a phenomenon accompanying capitalist development. It contradicts the socialist systems
in China and is opposed to the Marxist ideology of the relationship
between urban and rural areas.

Progress in research on Chinese urbanization

Science and Technology, extending the studies of Chinese
urbanization to the elds of both natural sciences and
human sciences.
During 1980s1990s, sociologists leading with Fei Xiaotong
have made outstanding contributions to the exploration of
path and models of Chinese urbanization, proposing the
road of going to cities instead of factories for rural
urbanization. Chinese historians also studied Chinese urbanization by integrating the history of modernization and
modern history of China (Yun, 1995; Ci, 1998; Zhao, 1998;
Yuan, 1999; Chen, 2003a, b, c, d). Recently, urbanization
has become a leading factor driving the growth of the
Chinese economy, and economists started to join the
research team studying Chinese urbanization, greatly consolidating the theoretical framework for the studies on
Chinese urbanization. On the basis of institutional economics and urban economics, He and Wu (2007) believed that
Chinese urbanization refers to the ow and the re-allocation
of national population, industries, and main production
elements under the direction of market mechanism in the
special space of cities.
Authorities of the central government took into comprehensive consideration the progress in Chinese urbanization
and actively promoted both the applied studies on urbanization and the setting up of public policies on Chinese
urbanization. In 1983, the Science and Technology Bureau of
the State Ministry of Urban and Rural Construction and
Environmental Protection launched a research project on
Urbanization Models in Chinas Several Developed Areas.
In 1985, the City Planning Division of the State Ministry of
Construction drafted the rst Outline on National Urban
System Planning and launched a debate on the guidelines of
urban development on the basis of Regulations on City
Planning and then Law on City Planning, greatly promoting
the studies of Chinese urbanization. In 1989, the State
Ministry of Civil Affairs drafted Predicting and Planning of
Designated Cities in China, aiming to regulate urbanization
process in China with such means as making adjustment to
administrative division of municipality.
To sum up, the studies on Chinese urbanization involve
different disciplines of geography, city planning, sociology,
demography, economics, and history as well as relevant
administrative authorities based on different understandings on urbanization according to different major gures
and governmental functions, which provides a good platform for launching comprehensive and cross-disciplinary
studies and for an accurate and complete understanding
of Chinese urbanization.

3. Studies on Chinese urbanization in the

mainland of China
Studies on Chinese urbanization can be roughly divided into
the following ve stages.

3.1.

The initial period (19781983)

Since China adopted reform and opening-up policies in

1978, economic construction has become the focal point
of the governmental works and greatly promoted rapid
urban development, bringing along at the same time the

105
issues of urbanization to both scholars and administrators.
During 19781983, the studies of Chinese urbanization was
during the initial stage mainly because on the one hand the
Maoist ideological restrictions should be broken through,
and on the other hand, many actual issues about urbanization should be discussed, which basically recognized urbanization as an inevitable trend in order to further economic
growth and social development. After Wu (1979) published
Several Issues on Socialist Urbanization in China, urban
geographers and city planners started to include Chinese
urbanization into their scope of research.
At this stage, the studies on Chinese urbanization were
initial and tentative. On the one hand, the studies mainly
served the purpose of city planning and the researchers
adopted many approaches in history (Hou, 1979), regional
analysis (Song, 1980), industrial development (Li, 1978),
population distribution (Wu, 1981), climate change (Zhou and
Zhang, 1982; Zhou, 1983; Zhang, 1983), and spatial distribution
of cities (Yu, 1983). On the other hand, urbanization became a
new subject itself (Chen, 1983; Ma, 1983) and the rst National
seminar on the Path of Urbanization in China was held in
Nanjing in 1983 (Wu, 1983). From the very beginning, Feng
(1983) raised a question: To Develop Small Cities, Is This the
Only Way for China to Promote Urbanization?
After that, the studies started to focus on the relationship
between economic development and urbanization. Zhou
(1982) studied the impact of industrialization, national policies
and GDP on urbanization. Zhang (1983) summarized two
models of top-to-bottom and bottom-up, the rst model refers
to the construction of small cities with national investment
since the 1960s, while the second model refers to the
promotion of urban growth by mainly relying on the ourishing
exchanges of agricultural by-products due to the rise of an
afuent countryside. Lin (1984) concluded that industrialization and urbanization serve as the cause and effect for each
other. According to the research project of Urbanization
Paths in Chinas Several Developed Areas launched by the
State Ministry of Construction, there are ve factors contributing to the progress in Chinese urbanization: state planned
investment, self-development and expansion of big and middle
cities, rural industrialization, foreign direct capital, and the
development of the local economy (Qi and Xia, 1985).

3.2. The period with constructed and borrowed

theories (19841988)
In August 1980, China launched special economic regions
such as Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou and Xiamen in Guangdong and Fujian coastal areas; in 1984, China opened 14
coastal cities such as Guangzhou, Beihai, Fuzhou, Ningbo,
Nantong, Tsingdao, Yantao, Weihai, Tianjin, Qinghuadao and
Dalian; in January 1985, the central government and the
State Council jointly held a meeting by gathering leaders in
the Yangtze River Delta Area, the Pearl River Delta Area,
and the Xia(men)Zhang(zhou)Quan(zhou) triangle Area in
south Fujian Province, proposing to open the three regions
in the coastal area. Along with the opening up of Chinas
eastern coastal areas, the factors driving Chinese urbanization changed from intrinsic to external, which leadsthe
setting up of frameworks of Chinese urbanization research

106
and the borrowing of urbanization theories from western
countries.
At the beginning, Chinese sociologists focused their
studies on independent theories on Chinese urbanization.
Fei (1984) investigated Wujiang County in Jiangsu Province
and later on published Small Towns, Big Problems, concluding that small towns are rural political, economic, and
cultural centers, and that to construct small towns is the
way to develop the rural economy and to provide job
opportunities for rural population. Fei (1985) also published
Small Towns, More Explorations, proposing to greatly promote village and town enterprises in small towns so as to
encourage the moving of surplus rural laborers and to
establish the special status of these enterprises in promoting a comprehensive rural economic growth in multiple
elds. Fei (1986) published Small Towns, New Development,
discussing the status and functions of small towns in Chinas
Four Modernizations (agricultural modernization, industrial
modernization, modernization of national security, and the
modernization of science and technology). In 1987, Jiangsu
research team of small towns published A Regional Analysis
on Small Towns, and in its Preface, Fei further reinforced
the signicance of developing small towns and questioned
whether the Sunan Model of urbanization featuring the
moving of rural population without leaving their hometown
as well as whether small scale land operation method in the
unit of individual family by contracting farming land to
individuals would contribute to a sustainable rural economic
growth (Jiangsu research team of small towns, 1987).
In 1985, China introduced reforms policies in urban
areas2; state-owned enterprises, community enterprises,
and free market of agricultural products have become
places to be reformed, which greatly promoted the borrowing of research fruits on urbanization concluded in western
countries with market-oriented economy.3 At this stage, the
focus is the introduction of foreign research results on
urbanization, especially the translation of foreign urbanization theories and the analysis of historical process of
urbanization, development rules and spatial patterns of
urbanization, dynamics and urban problems of urbanization
in foreign countries. Xie and Deng (1996) introduced the
S-Curve measuring urbanization level.4 Li (1986) adopted a
comparative approach to study the urbanization levels in
different countries. Some scholars translated many famous
works and articles about urbanization, including geographical issues about US Modern Urbanization by Gormanskinsky
2
In the early stage of reform and opening-up, the urban reforms
lagged far behind rural reform in China. With planned economy,
commodities were purchased and sold on a planned basis and
everything sold in cities were available with coupons. On 25
December 1978, the rst state-owned river aquatic products warehouse was founded in Guangzhou City; in March 1979, Guangzhou
became the rst in China to reform on the consolidated aquatic
products marketing system and allowed non-wild fresh and iced
shes to be marketed freely. Later on, the city also introduced the
reform measures to vegetable markets. In April 1985, the aquatic
products markets in Guangzhou were completely open, starting the
reforms in cities.
3
In 1985, geographers in China and the US started to cooperate in
studying urbanization in China.
4
Xie Wenhui, Urban Economics. Beijing: Tsinghua University Press,
1985, 5258.

Chaolin Gu et al.
(1986), an expert from the Soviet Union. Some Chinese
scholars began to cooperate with their foreign counterparts
in studying Chinese urbanization (Zhou and Bradshaw,
1988). During this period of time, Hu (1986) introduced
the effects of urban agglomeration and size economy. All
these efforts laid a solid theoretical foundation for more
in-depth research on Chinese urbanization.
During this period of time, the focus of this urban research
is the guideline for urban development (Zhou, 1984) and the
development stages (Zhou, 1984; Yu, 1988). The urban
research starts to select some topics to study Chinese
urbanization at the national level (Sun, 1984b; Wang and
Han, 1986; Zhou and Yang, 1986; Xu and Anthony, 1986;
Chen, 1987; Yu, 1988), some of them at the regional level
(Zong, 1988; Yu, 1988), some other at rural areas (Shui and
Wu, 1984; Sun and Lin, 1988), as well as on urban climate
(Shen, 1986; Zhang, 1984). Zhou (1984) also gave some
features and development trends of Chinese urbanization
(Ma, 1983; Lin, 1984), while Song and Gu (1988) bulte a
framework of the urban system planning based on the
studies of both city planning and urban geography in China.
At the same time, in order to meet actual demand of growth
in urban China, the State Statistical Authority included much
new urban statistical data for quantitative research on Chinese
urbanization. On the basis of this measurement revolution, a
large amount of statistics, and urbanization models developed
in western countries, geographers made quantitative studies on
Chinese urbanization. Liu (1987) made a case study on the
urbanization in Wenzhou area in Zhejiang province, concluding
several features of high urbanization level, rapid growth, and
the leading development of small towns, believing that the
leading driving forces behind the Wenzhou Model of urbanization include the role of family enterprises, specialized markets,
overpopulation, the extreme shortage of farming land that
encourages the oating of rural surplus labourers, and the
enthusiasm of afuent farmers in constructing towns. Yan
(1988) adopted correlation analysis of Gray System Model
Approach to study the mechanism promoting urbanization
among different regions and at different stages in China.
Xu et al (1988) drew the conclusion after study that the Chinese
urbanization process had been greatly affected by the planned
economic system, township enterprises and export-oriented
economy. While Ye et al. (1988) emphasized the leading role
played by big cities in urbanization and three channels for the
moving of surplus rural laborers: moving to big, middle and
small cities; farmers or township enterprise staff moving to the
nearest towns or organic towns with self-supplied provisions
shall be calculated as non-agricultural population; leaving
farming work without leaving hometown.

3.3. The period focusing on key factors and

localization (19891997)
In 1988, China reformed its land-use and land property
system,5 and the use of land changed from administrative
5
In 1982, the Constitution was promulgated and put into force.
In 1987, the state-owned land use right was rst transferred in
Shenzhen. In 1988, the amended Constitution conrmed the
necessity of the ow of land use right in the market and granted
constitutional status on it.

Progress in research on Chinese urbanization

allocation to a paid use, making a large amount of nancial
resource to be used in the construction of urban infrastructure. The reform measure affected urban development
as well as relevant practice of urbanization in a large sense.
During this period, the research topics focus on some case
studies of urbanization in previous level in China after the
adoption of reform and opening-up policies (Meng, 1992a;
Chen and Wu, 1995; Lin, 1994; Wang, 1994; Wu, 1994; Yang,
1993; Wang and Luo, 1993). Chinese urbanization is dened
as a process during which laborers move from agriculture
to manufacture and from countryside to urban areas, but
the population growth is severely out of line with the
growth of employment in China (Meng, 1992a), making it
impossible to realize a balanced process of urbanization.
Therefore in the 1980s, China greatly promoted town and
village enterprises in the hope of absorbing surplus labor in
rural areas with local industries so as to relieve the pressure
on cities caused by the number and quality of rural laborers
(Meng, 1992b). Gu (1995) studied the development of
Chinese organic towns as well as regional difference and
spatial evolution after 1949, arguing that foreign scholars
adopted such approaches of ideological analysis, class
analysis, and economic analysis and concluded on the
anti-urbanization trend in China, but this was not the case.
Urbanization is closely related to the urban system development level, to the regional economic and social development level, and to the geographical expansion (Qin, 1994).
The path of Chinese urbanization remains the focus of
research (Bao, 1995; Wang and Luo, 1993; Zhao, 1990;
Yang, 1990; Meng, 1992a; Wang, 1994; Yan, 1995; Zhang,
1995; Zhou, 1997; Zhao, 1997; Wang, 1997; Ning, 1997),
while another key content of research was the urbanization
process in some typical areas such as the Yangtze River
Delta (Zheng, 1994; Zhang, 1992; Qin, 1994; Wu, 1994).
Other topics include national strategies of Chinese urbanization (Gu et al., 1997; Yao et al., 1997; Gu, 1991), and the
guidelines on urban development decided according to
urban size role (Hu, 1990; Lin and Ma, 1990; Wang, 1990;
Chen, 1996a, b). More scholars started to explore extensive
topics including the exploration of Chinese urbanization
path (Ma, 1990a, b; Zhao, 1996), the main elements of
Chinese urbanization, such as rural urbanization (Gao,
1990), population urbanization (Ma, 1990a, b), urbanization
under regional economic development (Wang, 1991), landuse and urbanization (Dong et al., 1993; Hao, 1994; Du and
Xu, 1997; Jin, 1997), urban inner structure (Mou and Liu,
1994; Lin, 1994), and dynamics of migration (Cai, 1990),
urban infrastructure and service facilities (Shi, 1991), the
role of women (Yang, 1994), the household registration
system and foreign direct investment migrants among urban
and rural areas (Zhao, 1997), and the investment environment (Cheng, 1995).
At the same time, the studies of regional urbanization
have been further emphasized, Gu (1991) made tentative
studies on the division of urban economic areas in China,
and the studies on regional urbanization have proved to be
fruitful, such as the studies on urbanization in West China
(Zhang, 1992), in urban agglomeration in middle Liaoning
Province (Dong and Liu, 1991), and in the Yangtze River
Delta Area (Marton, 1996). After Hong Kong was handed
back to China, the Shenzhen-Hong Kong area became hot
research topics (Yan and Leng, 1997; Zhu and Wang, 1997;

107
Li, 1997; Lin, 1997). Furthermore, more new topics came to
the horizon of the researchers, including the hidden urbanization phenomenon (Zhong and Yuan, 1993), urban physical boundaries (Zhou and Shi, 1995), rural urbanization (Li,
1995; Chen and Wu, 1995; Zhang, 1996; Li and Xie, 1997;
Song, 1997; Wei, 1997a; Zou and Liu, 1997), urban social
space (Xu et al. (1989); Gu and Kesteloot, 1997a, b; Hu,
1997), the urban fringe (Gu et al., 1993), and the world
cities (Pang, 1996).
Chinese scholars found that urbanization theories from
foreign countries could not explain all the issues and
problems of Chinese urbanization during this period (Han
and Chi, 1995; Wu, 1995; Yan, 1990; Zhao, 1993) and started
to localize western theories on urbanization. After Deng
Xiaoping made his famous tour inspection to the South China
in 1992 and had a series of speeches, China further
promoted the degree of reform and opening-up as well as
urbanization process, which made the researches on
Chinese urbanization become more localizated. Liu (1999)
summarized the features of Chinese urbanization from
bottom to top. Liu made some analysis on the dual social
structure in urban and rural China and concluded that 14
specic social systems nally created the dual social
structure in China. These 14 systems include household
registration system, grain supply system, non-staple foodstuffs and fuel supply system, urban housing supply system,
production materials supply system, education system,
employment system, health system, pension and insurance
system, labor security system, talent system, military
service system. He also emphasized the importance of
capital and land for rural urbanization. Gu (1991) discussed
four main elements for rural urbanization, that is, industrialization, rural modernization, the urbanization of surplus labor force, and migration, concluding that the lagging
urbanization area was the result due to many restrictions,
such as the provision of commodity grains in cities, the
provision of urban housing, the industrial structure, the
urban ownership system, the inadequate development of
the tertiary industry, the scattered industrial distribution,
and the lagging of urban infrastructure.
More scholars summarized the comprehensive urban
reform achievements and found that, in order to promote
Chinese urbanization process, it is required to reform landuse and housing systems (Wang and Luo, 1993). Chen
(2002a, b) pointed out in the Preface to Policies and
Practice of Urban Development in Small Towns during its
urbanization process, China managed to relieve the pressure
caused by surplus rural labor on big and middle cities
through local absorption of this labour force. Rural urbanization becomes the leading guideline and policy on urbanization in China.

3.4. The period with strong governmental support

(19982004)
The Asian Financial Crisis broke out in 1997 and China also
faced a difcult economic situation, with foreign trade and
exports dropping greatly. The Central Committee of the CPC
and the State Council adopted active nancial policies, solid
and healthy monetary policies, constructing infrastructure
by issuing national debt through banks so as to make full use

108
of surplus productivity. During 19982000, the total amount
of public debt issued for urban infrastructure construction
reached 360 billion RMB, investing in highways, electric
railways, ood control in the Yangtze River, and ecological
and environmental protection projects, which drive domestic demand and promote the integration of urbanization and
industrialization, serving as the engine for the national
economic growth. It also meant that the role of urbanization in promoting national economic and social growth was
recognized by government leaders and policy makers,
indicating that urban research entered a new stage with
strong support from the government.
Chinas National Development and Reform Commission
started research for the compiling of The 10th Five-YearPlan and included topics on urbanization in 1998. According
to The 10th Five Year Plan on National Economic Growth
and Social Development published in 1999, Chinese urbanization is a new engine promoting the modernization in
China. Moreover, the importance of implementing the
strategy of urbanization has been reinforced in both
Urbanization: the Mainstream of Modernization in China
published in 2001 by the National Development and Reform
Commission and in The Report to the 16th CCPC in 2002.
China included the studies of urban development and
urbanization into national middle-and-long-term science
and technology development planning in 2003. The National
Development and Reform Commission joined hands with the
experts from the World Bank in studying Chinese urbanization, proposing the concept of dual urbanization so as to
actively promote the construction of new socialist countryside in 2004. The 11th Five-Year-Plan for national economic
growth and social development made a clear strategy of
actively and steadily promoting Chinese urbanization process in 2005.
During this period of time, both top-to-bottom and
bottom-up urbanization started to show their respective
weakness, while government, enterprises, and individuals
became the new driving factors for Chinese urbanization
(Ning, 2000,1998; Li et al., 2000). The new type of Chinese
urbanization mainly appeared in the east coastal areas,
while in inland areas, urbanization still relied mainly on one
or two driving factors (Ning, 1998). In the late 1990s, along
with the rapid growth of both urbanization and research
teams, especially with the development of the Pearl River
Delta Area, the Yangtze River Delta Area and the rising of
urban agglomeration in China, research started to focus on
comprehensive studies of the dynamic mechanism for
Chinese urbanization. Ning (1998) argued that the role that
the capital played during Chinese urbanization process,
especially in the east coastal areas, and the role that local
governments played in metropolitan areas in the Pearl River
Delta Area and the Yangtze River Delta Area were different
from that in foreign countries relying heavily on the
development of metropolises. Moreover, other driving factors include the changes of industrial structure, the technological progress, the control of national policies, and the
urban and rural interaction (Duan and Li, 1999). Cui and Ma
(1999) also emphasized the importance of policies, capital,
and community government in promoting Chinese urbanization. Internationalization strategies also have great impact
on the Chinese urbanization (Zhao, 2000a); other important
driving factors include institutional innovation (Tang, 2000)

Chaolin Gu et al.
and market, resources, and new division of labour (Zhao,
1999, 2000b). Gu and Liu (2000) believed that institutional
changes and arrangements are core to Chinese urbanization. Except for sociologists including Fei Xiaotong focusing
their study on small towns, most scholars adopted multiple
perspectives in studying rural urbanization. Zheng (1998)
systematically explored the basic theories on rural urbanization and the mechanism on small towns and decentralization, proposing that urban and rural segmentation system
causes the unique operation mechanism for Chinese rural
urbanization.
Along with the extensive engagement of economics in
urban China studies, the research on urbanization is closely
related to the following issues: sustainable development,
the industrial structure in transition, land and labor markets, the issues of agriculture, farmers, and countryside. In
his Urban Agglomeration Economy: General Theories and
their Application in Solving Urbanization Issues in China,
Feng (2001) adopted an approach of spatial economics to
investigate the economic efciency of cities with different
size based on urban agglomeration economic theories. Lu
(2002) proposed that the focus of research on Chinese
urbanization shall be changed from its path to its mechanism, that the basic framework on Chinese urbanization
studies shall be further improved, and that the necessity
and feasibility of rural social security and insurance system
shall be investigated and could be realized by exchanging
security with objects. Li (2002) believed that urban and
rural integration is a key to solve the problem of surplus
rural labors. Wang and Chen (2002) studied the labor
re-allocation during urbanization process in Zhejiang Province, analyzed the actual development of labor market and
non-regular employment in the province; they also mentioned the employment system and social security system.
Huang and Wang (2002) argued that the reason why
urbanization lags behind industrialization is the current
land-use and land property system.
At the same time, the studies on guideline of urban
development and on path of urbanization in China continued. Zheng (1998) focused on rural urbanization and the
mechanism of small towns and decentralization, believing
that the urban and rural segmentation system is the major
reason behind the unique operation system of rural urbanization in China. Through constructing an index system
and analyzing regional difference, he concluded that the
research perspective on urbanization should change from
city alone to city-region. Liu (1999) believed that the most
appropriate path for Chinese urbanization is decentralized
urbanization focusing on the growth of small cities and
towns. In terms of population urbanization in China, there
are four models of Panzhihua, Wenzhou, Sunan, and
Zhuhai. With the guideline of achieving sustainable development and in terms of moderate population urbanization
process, the strategy for future population urbanization
must be diverse in model options, be decentralized in
path options, be hierarchical in regional options, be
comprehensive in efciency options, and be staged in
process options.
Furthermore, regional urbanization remained as the focus
of research, especially the comparative studies of relatively
developed areas (Cao, 2001; Duan, 2002; Li and Wang, 2002;
Zhang and Gu, 2002). Most scholars studied regional

Progress in research on Chinese urbanization

urbanization by administrative regions or economic regions.
According to incomplete statistics, a large amount of
researches have been made on Heilongjiang, Liaoning,
Shanxi, Taiwan, Zhejiang, Shanghai, and Jiangsu (Gu,
1997; Cheng, 2000; Yu and Zhao, 1999; Tang and Yao,
1999a, b; Hou, 1999; Pei, 1999; Yang, 2000; Guo and Bai,
2000; Sun and Lin, 2000; Zhang, 1996; Yang and Zhang,
1996). Many scholars also included new phenomena of
urbanization caused by the political and economic changes
in both the world and in China to study the institutional
changes, the adjustments made to administrative division,
the policies of upgrading county to municipality and
changing county to urban district, and city planning
(Li, 2002; Zhao, 2001; Chen, 2002a, b; Zhang, 2002; Zhang
and Gu, 2002; Qiu, 2002; Wang, 2002a, b, c; Zou, 2001;
Zhang, 2001). Other topics on Chinese urbanization included
industrial bases and new types of urbanization (Zhang et al.,
2004), information or network cities (Wang and Ning, 2004),
and the urban social space during the transitional stage
(Gu et al., 2003).

3.5.

The ourishing period (After 2005 until now)

Since the National Tenth Five-Year-Plan emphasized urbanization in the plan for the national plan of economic
growth and social development, together with the great
promotion of government on the researches on Chinese
urbanization. The Outline of National Middle-and-LongTerm Science and Technology Development Plan (2006
2020) listed the research on technologies of urban development and urbanization as the 11th topic for the rst
time, which made the research on Chinese urbanization
have an unprecedented ourishing. During two years from
2005 to 2006, there were 23 papers on Chinese urbanization published in City Planning Reviews (in Chinese), 20 in
Urban Studies (in Chinese), 8 in Economic Geography (in
Chinese). During three years from 2005 to 2007, there were
22 articles on Chinese urbanization published in Urban
Problems (in Chinese), 33 in Acta Geographica Sinica (in
Chinese), 7 in Geographical Research (in Chinese), and 13
in Human Geography (in Chinese), with six articles on
urbanization being published in each journal every year on
average. The specic topics include during that time:
Urbanization in China and Its Sustainable Development
(Ye, 2007), Chinese City Bearing Capacity and Crisis
Management (CAST, 2008), the changes of rural land-use
during urbanization process (Li et al., 2007; Su et al.,
2007), semi-urbanization phenomenon (Liu et al., 2005),
dynamics of rapid Chinese urbanization (Chen et al., 2004;
Fang and Liu, 2007), the roles of government during
urbanization process (Lin, 2006), social justice (Ren,
2006), urban village (Zhu et al., 2006), institution and its
restriction (Zhao, 2006), public policies on urbanization
(Gu and Gu, 2006), mega-city regions (Zhang, 2006; Yan
et al., 2006), rural urbanization and new rural villages
(Xie, 2005; Ye et al., 2005; Li and Li, 2005; Li and Wang,
2006), a urban and rural harmonious development (Yuan
et al., 2005; Zhang et al., 2006), passive urbanization
(Zhang and Gu, 2006), the impact of mega-projects on
urbanization (Zhao, 2006a, b, c, d), the globalization and
reconstruction of national urban system (Gu et al., 2005),

109
the impact of urbanization on the diversity of soil,
hydrology, and regional climate (Sun et al., 2006;
Xie et al., 2007; Lin and Zuo, 2007; Liu et al., 2005; Yuan
et al., 2007), urbanization and ecological environment
coupling model (Liu and Song, 2005), the process of
man-made land form in cities, issues of public health
during urbanization process (Yu and Gao, 2007; Zhang
et al., 2007), urban expansion (Jiang et al., 2007;
Ma et al., 2007a, b), and the growth alliance and urban
goverance (Luo and Shen, 2006b, 2007). Yeh et al. (2006)
concluded that the fourth wave of urbanization started
in China, while Zhou (2006) emphasized that China
must stick to an urbanization path with its own distinct
characteristics.

4.

Overseas studies of Chinese urbanization

The overseas studies on Chinese urbanization can be dated

back to the early 20th Century, and most of the rst
researchers are sinologists engaging in Chinese studies;
accordingly, they usually adopted such approaches of
history, sociology, human sciences, and folk-custom and
culture. For example, Japanese scholar Kato Shigeshi
(1937) studied a large amount of local records from the
Qing Dynasty under the reign of Emperor Kangxi, Qianlong
till Guangxu and Xuantong and then to the Republic of
China (19121949), and investigated the regular markets in
Zhili (Hebei), Shandong, Shanxi, Henan, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, publishing Regular Rural Markets during
Qing Dynasty. Since 1950s, the isolation of China for a
period of time attracted another group of foreign experts
in politics, economics, and geography (Ma and Hanten,
1981). After China adopted reform and opening-up policies
in the 1980s, a large number of overseas Chinese students
also engaged in the research team, further promoting the
overseas studies on urban China to a new peak. In general,
however, due to the lack of detailed and reliable data and
the separation from Chinese academic community for a
long period of time (Ma and Noble, 1986), the overseas
studies on Chinese urbanization still lag in a vacuum area
between theories and actual practice.

4.1. The period focusing on history of Chinese

urbanization (before the 1970s)
Before the 1960s, foreign scholars mainly explored the
reasons why capitalism and then western urbanization
have not been achieved in such a country as China with
long history and profound cultural background. Weber and
Gerth (1951) argued that Confucianism serving as the
ruling ideology in China prevented the country from
developing capitalism and urbanization while promoted
the growth of ruralism. According to US research team on
the modern history of China, whose representatives
include Fairbank and Liu (1978) with his impact-response
model and Levenson (1959) with his traditionmodernity
model, Chinese society basically experienced a long-term
cycle or a status of stagnancy and its evolution toward
modern society only occurred after the great impact
by strong western countries in middle 19th century.

110
Paul (1989) once criticized this point of view as being
typical occidental-centered.6
During 1960s1970s, the younger generation of US historians criticized the occidental centered theories on the one
hand, and on the other hand, they actively advocate
empirical studies based on the actual situation in China.
Skinner, who was from the Department of Anthropology at
Stanford University, is a representative adopting Chinesecentered perspective in studies and, based on the central
place theory of Christaller, he conducted a eld investigation
during 19491950 on Gaodianzi, a market 25 km away from
southeast Chengdu in Sichuan Province, interviewed a large
amount of overseas mainland migrants, and studied many
local records, publishing his Marketing and Social Structure
in Rural China (1964). Later on, with years of efforts, he
published Regional Urbanization in China during the 19th
Century, and edited The City in Late Imperial China (1977).
At the same time, most geographers studied Chinese
urbanization from the perspective of historical geography.
For example, Chang (1961, 1963) studied the geographical
distribution of cities during the Qing Dynasty and the
historical trend of urbanization in China, Trewartha (1952)
studied the origin and function of Chinese cities.

4.2. The systematic research on Chinese

urbanization (19701999)
In the 1970s and especially after 1979, the reform and
opening-up policies actively urged China to join in the wave
of urbanization in the world, and overseas scholars started
to conduct systematic studies on Chinese urbanization. Due
to different perspectives in observing issues, they usually
held different opinions on Chinese urbanization from those
believed by domestic scholars.
As for these researches, most scholars paid attention to
the impact of industrialization on urbanization. Kirkby
(1985) believed that the slow urbanization process in China
is the result of over-emphasizing the established goal of
industrialization. In order to realize the goal, China ignored
the construction of urban infrastructure and the expanded
re-production of rural economy but invested in heavy
industries instead, which weakened the driving force for
further urban development. Cannon and Jenkins (1990)
further explored the topic and argued that the distribution
of Chinese industries was actually a practical choice made
under special historical conditions, but the decentralized
industrial pattern prevented the further process of urbanization in a large sense. The studies made in the late 1990s
started to take comprehensive consideration on the joint
impact of both agriculture and manufacturing on Chinese
urbanization (Young and Deng, 1998), and emphasized that
6

Paul A. Cohen (1934-) studied the history of Chinese ideology and

the history of relations between China and western countries after
Professor John K. Fairbank and Professor Benjamin I. Schwartz at
Harvard University in 1955 after graduation, and got both master
degree and PhD degree. Discovering History in China: American
Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past is his masterpiece and
marks the end of Fairbank Era, pointing out a new path for western
scholars in studying Chinese problems, that is, to study the history
and current status of China based on internal causes instead of
external force and causes.

Chaolin Gu et al.
the effective food supply restricted the rapid growth of
urban population (Tang, 1984). Yin Wang Kowk also started
to pay attention to the impact of information industry and
multi-national companies on the urbanization in developing
countries and, on the basis of reviewing relevant theories on
foreign information industry, analyzed the impact on urbanization of information industry employment, foreign investment and domestic education development in the countries in
the Asia-Pacic Region (Kowk and Ou, 1989).
Due to the lack of reliable and universal data and
statistics, the overseas studies on the Chinese urbanization
are greatly different from those made by domestic scholars.
For example, Chan (1994) made regression analysis based on
the data in the early 1980s, concluding that the urban
population was in positive correlation with the average rural
grain output in a province; while Young and Deng (1998)
introduced a supplydemand model of urbanization to
investigate the urbanization process in China based on the
joint function of industry and agriculture, concluding
through the analysis on the data of 19781991 that agriculture played a more important role than industry and that
the entire urbanization process was still restricted by
relatively low agricultural product supply. Another example
is the overseas studies on the process of Chinese urbanization. They divided the entire process into three stages
starting from 1949 according to the level of urbanization:
19491960, 19611976, and after 1978 (Kirkby, 1985; Chan,
1992). After 1978, the adoption of reform and opening-up
policies and the strategy of the Four Modernizations broke
the long-term stagnancy of urban development in China (Ran
and Berry, 1989). But their understanding on urbanization
level in China differed greatly; some believed that China has
always been in a status of underurbanization (Perkins, 1969;
Lardy, 1982; Chan, 1992, 1994), while others argued that
they spotted overurbanization during certain periods of time
in this country (Kirkby, 1985; Ran and Berry, 1989).
Other topics of research during this period of time also
include: the urban forms in China (Chang, 1970), city network (Rozman, 1973), urban system (Chang, 1976), the
relationship between national development and the process
of urbanization (Chiu, 1980; Leubg and Ginsburg, 1980; Ma
and Hanten, 1981; Chang, 1981), provincial difference in
terms of urbanization (Yeh and Xu, 1984), urbanization
growth models (Pannell, 1986), the development of small
cities (Ma and Lin, 1993), foreign investment promoting
urbanization (Sit and Yang, 1997a, b, c), and the urbanization
path in China (Zhu, 1999). Many scholars emphasized that the
development of coastal areas in China, especially the development of cities in southeast coastal areas after 1978, had
direct relation with the favorable national policies (Lin,
1997; Wei, 2000). The 4th issue of Urban Geography in
1986 and other research books on urbanization in the
developing countries also explored other issues on Chinese
urbanization (Jones and Visaria, 1997; Gugler, 1997).
The City in Late Imperial China by Skinner (1977) and
Urbanization in China: Town and Country in a developing
economy 19492000 AD by Kirkby (1985) are among the most
important works on Chinese urbanization during this period
of time. Other important researches include the studies
made by Chan on household registration system and on the
urbanization in China, and the studies made by Shen on
urban and rural migration (Chan, 1994; Shen, 1995).

Progress in research on Chinese urbanization

4.3. Studies on framework of Chinese

urbanization (after 2000)
In the 21st Century, Chinese urbanization has been universally recognized as one of the two main driving factors
promoting world economic and social growth. Accordingly,
the world leading research institutions (including UN-HABITAT,
the World Bank, International Systems Institute USA, The Ford
Foundation, and JETRO) and leading researchers (such as Peter
Hall, John Friedmann, and John Logan) turned their eyes on
the studies of Chinese urbanization. Logan established the
Urban China Research Network in the University of New York
at Albany, USA after the large scale international conference
on The Future of Chinese Cities: A Research Agenda for the
21st Century in Shanghai in 1999. And during the third annual
meeting of Urban China Research Network held in Hong Kong,
a scholar made a prediction that the studies of urbanization in
China lagged far behind the developed western countries and
the framework launching of Chinese urbanization has to rely
on works of Anglo-Saxon scientists. This conclusion seems to
be ridiculous today after Chinese people successfully launched
its moon exploration project in 2007, but in 2004, this was an
actual scene in Hong Kong.
During this period of time, international leading scholars
published many important works on Chinese urbanization.
Blackwell Press published The New Chinese City: Globalization and Market Reform by Logan in 2001. Friedmann
published Chinas Urban Transition in 2005. Friedmann
published Four Theses in the Study of Chinas Urbanization
in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research in
2006, emphasizing that to research Chinese urbanizationone
must rstly recognize that China is a country with an
ancient urban civilization but at the same time with an
unprecedented urbanization today, resulting in the dual
features of urbanization progress in China. Second, the
Chinese urbanization is a process of multi-dimensional social
and spatial development, covering at least seven aspects in
history, economy, society, and culture. Third, although the
urbanization process in China interacts with the process of
globalization, yet in terms of urban and rural relationship, it
shall be rstly understood as an endogenous process, which
will guide the special modernization with distinct Chinese
characteristics (Friedmann, 2006). In 2007, Friedmann
published on the same journal Reections on Place and
Place-making in the Cities of China, making studies on the
small space of Chinese cities. He roughly divided the process
of urban area creation into four periods: the period of
empire, the period of the Republic of China (19121949),
the period under the rule of Mao, and the period after
reform and opening-up launched by Deng, and proposed
several topics for further investigation and studies.
Furthermore, the overseas studies on the Chinese urbanization became ourishing during this period of time. Fan
(2002) analyzed the regional population growth in China,
arguing that population growth is closely related to economic growth; and the geographical division of East China,
Middle China, West China based on economic growth level
makes it convenient to analyze and explain current regional
difference in economic development and has practical signicance in the studies of regional urbanization (Marton,
2000). Shen studied urban population statistics and oating
population (Shen, 2002; Shen and Huang, 2003; Shen, 2005).

111
Zhang (2002) compared and analyzed the data in a long period
of time and of different regions, concluding that foreign
investment played an important role in promoting regional
urbanization in China, although national policies, regional
economic growth, and other historical and geographical
factors also contributed to the progress. Pannell (2003)
introduced the research results obtained by Oshima in the
studies of urbanization in East Asia and compared the changes
of industries and population, explaining and analyzing the
relationship between economic structure in transition and
Chinese urbanization by employment shift. This model found
several actual examples in some coastal areas in China, but
due to the large population in China, it cannot be applied in
the entire country. After all, with a working population of
more than 700 million, it is just too much for the employment
opportunities provided by national economic growth. Some
scholars found reasons from the institutional obstacles caused
by a long-term planned economic system (Lin, 2002).
The 12th issue of Urban Studies in 2002 published the
research results on the Chinese urbanization, covering such
topics as factors deciding on rural industrialization, internal
migration, and urban migration (Chen and Coulson, 2002; Li
and Zahniser, 2002), urban unemployment, oating population,
cities in transition (Logan, 2001; Sit, 2001), urban economic
growth (Lin and Song, 2002), urban productivity (Pan and
Zhang, 2002), the urbanization after reform and opening-up
(Zhang, 2002), urbanization and city distribution (Song and
Zhang, 2002), population growth, the role of government in
urbanization, the analysis of political economics.
Recent researches include the dual urbanization in China
(Yeh, 2005; Shen, 2006a; urbanization promoted by the
state government (Cook, 2006), the measurement of urbanization level in China (Zhuo et al., 2003; Shen, 2006b), the
impact of resources on urbanization (Wong and Shen, 2002),
the rules of urbanization under socialist market-oriented
economy, and the transformation of urban social spatial
structure (Cook, 2007a, Gu and Shen, 2003; Gu et al., 2006).
Chinese urbanization in transition attracted the attention of
many scholars (Cook, 2000, Smith, 2000; Logan, 2001; Ma,
2002; Pannell, 2002; He et al., 2006; Ma and Wu, 2005; Wu,
2006).

5. Main achievements of Chinese

urbanization studies
Although China started late in the research of urbanization,
yet on the basis of national strategy on urbanization, the
academic community has undertaken many studies on
Chinese urbanization, obtaining mainly achievements as
follows:

5.1.

Policies of urbanization in China

5.1.1. Guideline on urban development

Since 1978, on the basis of the research fruits on urbanization in China, the state has decided step-by-step on the
guidelines for urban development. In 1980, the State
Council approved Summaries on National City Planning
Work Meeting, conrming the guidelines of controlling
the size of big cities, developing reasonably the middle
cities, and promoting actively the growth of small cities.

112
According to the Law of City Planning adopted in 1989, the
state shall guide itself by the principle of strictly controlling
the size of large cities and developing medium-sized and
small cities and towns to an appropriate extent in the
interest of a rational distribution of productive forces and of
the population. In the late 1990s, Chinas Agenda 21
proposed new goals for urbanization, that is, to moderately
control the fast growth of population in big cities, to
develop satellite cities of large cities, to actively and
moderately develop medium-sized and small cities, and to
greatly promote the growth of towns.
A debate on the issues of guidelines for urban development in China focus on how to control large cities and to
develop small cities (Zhou, 1988), some scholars support the
strict control on large cities (Dong, 1996), some believe that
the right thing to do is to actively promote the growth of
small cities and towns (Peng, 1998; Ning and Jiang, 1999;
Chen, 2000a, b, c, d), or at least to reasonably develop
small cities and towns (Chen, 1996). Some scholars questioned the principle of strictly controlling the size of large
cities (Shi, 1999a,b; Chen, 1996a, b); in view of both
domestic and international social and economic situations
as well as the difculties facing the growth of small cities
and towns in the late 1990s, urban geographers and city
planners have reviewed and reected the existing researches
on the guidelines on Chinese urbanization (Jiang, 2002a, b; Li,
2002; Wu, 2004; Chen, 2005), claried or re-explored some
basic concepts including city, region, and urbanization
(Hu, 2003; Wu, 2006; Liu and Jiao, 2006), analyzed more
rationally the challenges and chances (Qiu, 2003a, 2003bc,
2003d), the crisis (Chen, 2006), and technological issues
(Zou, 2004b) facing Chinese urbanization. Chen (2005)
adopted a non-mainstream perspective and concluded more
rapidly that the unilateral understanding on Chinese urbanization as well as the ideologies of western modernity, developmentalism and neo-liberalism would result in the distorting
and misunderstanding of Chinese urbanization. The guidelines for urban development shall take into consideration
more factors and shall be expressed in a more complete way
(Chen, 2000a, b, c, d), be diverse in planning cities of
different sizes (Yu, 1988), be based on actual local conditions (Chen, 1996a, b), be diverse, non-even, gradually
promoted for a comprehensive development and shall focus
on the construction of urban system or urban network (Gao,
1990; Shi, 1999b), shall focus on the active and sustainable
urbanization (Zhou, 1998; Li, 2000; Ma, 2000), shall create a
modern and sustainable urban system (Hu, 2000), shall be
completely open and efciency-oriented (Liu, 2000), shall
take into the consideration the impact of globalization
(Gu et al., 1997; Pang, 1996).
In the 21st Century, the discussions on Chinese urban
development are no longer restricted in the limited scope
of city size and new urban development guidelines, while
the conicts at the bottom of the urban development
(Wang, 2003) as well as among population (such as restriction of the household registration system), resources (such
as land), and economic development (such as the division
of labour) have become increasingly concerned (Miao,
2003). The fundamental solution for Chinese urbanization
is to continuously improve systems, to reduce transaction cost, and to improve division efciency of labour
(Chen, 2006). Because the Chinese urbanization is not only

Chaolin Gu et al.
a process during which rural non-agricultural population
turns into urban population, it is also a process during
which cities play an increasing leading and important role
in political and social changes, which makes it a social
reform for countryside to turn into cities (Wu, 2006). In this
sense, the leading direction for the Chinese urbanization is
a healthy development (Li, 2003; Chen, 2005), quality
(Zhang, 2001), and distinct characteristics (Zou, 2004a;
Qiu, 2005; Zhou, 2006).
5.1.2. Path of Chinese urbanization
In response to the discussion on the guidelines for urban
development, the debate on Chinese urbanization path was
also strong during the 1980s1990s, with many paths focusing on small cities, on large cities, on medium-sized cities,
on a harmonious development, and on the urban system.
(1) Focusing on small cities: in 1983, seminar on Urbanization Path in China reached a concurrent conclusion that
China shall stick to a socialist urbanization path suiting
the actual conditions and with distinct characteristics,
while at the same time, the regional urbanization paths
shall also have different features (Wu, 1983). Both the
seminar and the keynote report made by Wu (1983)
focused on actively restoring and developing small cities
and towns, especially rural markets on the basis of
socialist productivity distribution theories and on the
requirements of safety, for small cities conform to
rationality and have vital force (Wang, 1990). After
the reform and opening-up, with the reality of rural
industrialization, the guideline of Small Cities and
Big Strategy, as well as the continuous functioning of
established urban and rural systems, this opinion
became dominant during 1980s and in early 1990s
in China.
(2) Focusing on large cities: Feng (1983) argued that the
focus shall be put on the development of big and
medium-sized cities with favorable conditions as well
as central cities. Rao and Qu (1989) clearly pointed
out that big cities enjoyed more scale efciency than
small cities. Wang and Xia (1999) proposed the priority
of developing cities with a population ranging from one
to four million. Rao and Cong (1999) believed that the
urban scale efciency continuously played an important
role and the restrictions on the size of big cities shall be
moderated. Zhou (1998) proposed to rstly develop big
cities in underdeveloped areas so as to create a core
that can drive the development of medium-sized and
small cities.
(3) Focusing on a harmonious development: some scholars
tried to nd compromise between the two conicting
opinions and proposed a dual (or diverse) urbanization
models of urban modernization and localization by
focusing on rural urbanization and on constructing urban
agglomeration as the center (Ning, 1997; Zhong, 2000)
or by realizing a harmonious development among big,
medium-sized, and small cities so as to nd different
development paths for East, Middle and West China (Yu,
1999; Chen and Hao, 2005).
(4) Focusing on medium-sized cities: an editorial published
in Economic Perspectives proposed the theory of

Progress in research on Chinese urbanization

development focusing on medium-sized cities in 1984,
but the research results are relatively unsatisfactory.
(5) Focusing on urban system: along with the deepening of
studies on urbanization, Zhou (1988) argued that there
is no universally acknowledged and accepted so called
best city size, for urban system is always composed of
cities and towns of different sizes, while cities at
different levels have different requirements on conditions in order to grow. Therefore the Chinese urbanization models shall be diverse. More scholars studied
the development paths of urban system (Hu, 2000;
Deng, 2000; Zhao and Cai, 2003).
Some scholars believed that the choice made on future
Chinese urbanization path is actually decided by the choice
on national development strategy (Zhao, 1990); Sun (2005)
also warned against the tendency of making policies on
Chinese urbanization based on the assumptions instead of
on actual conditions.

5.2.

Features of Chinese urbanization

Foreign scholars (Lo, 1987; Fan, 1999) admitted that, before

the 1980s, the Chinese urbanization is a part of socialist
urbanization and different from that in the west or in other
developing countries. According to the mainstream opinion
in the domestic academic community, the Chinese urbanization is unique in the world, it is just that, before the
1990s, people explained the difference with the advantageous socialist system, while after 1990s, the explanations
changed to the fact that China is the most populous country
in the world and the actual conditions in the country, which
makes it in accordance with the guideline or path of the
urbanization with distinct characteristics.
5.2.1. Characteristics of Chinese urbanization
In early 1980s, the characteristics of Chinese urbanization
included the slow growth of urban population, the continuous adjustments made to the proportion of urban
population through planned and administrative measures,
the sharp increase of both farming and working population
in extensive rural areas (Ma, 1983). In the 1990s, scholars
had a better understanding on the interaction between
urbanization and economic development and social transformation, and Gu (1991) pointed out that both urbanization and the industrialization serving as its foundation were
initiated by the government in China, so that the urban
development and rural urbanization progressed side by side
at the same time. Since urbanization is low in capacity of
absorbing non-agricultural laborers, the urban structure is
inconsistent, rural laborers tend to change vocations
instead of places to live, therefore, the leading characteristics of urbanization in the period when socialist marketoriented economy was rstly initiated in China include: the
dual social structure, regional discrepancy, the inadequate
capacity of absorbing surplus agricultural labors in cities,
the surplus agricultural labor in rural areas, the coexistence
of rural industrialization and urbanization, the moving of
rural population through multiple channels, and the macro
planned control (Fu, 1993). In the 21st Century, apart from
continuous discussion of population, region, and industries,

113
a common focus for almost all scholars is the concept of
sustainable development, which urges them to study the
characteristics of Chinese urbanization include the continuous rapid growth, the extreme imbalance, the dependence
on economic growth, the coexistence of urbanization and
marketization, the only solution to the problems of agriculture, farmers, and countryside, the resource protection
and damages (Qiu, 2003a, 2003bc, 2003d).
5.2.2. Level and speed of Chinese urbanization
The studies on the level and speed of Chinese urbanization
can be roughly divided into three elds: (1) To question and
to improve the concepts concerning urbanization level
measurement including city and urban population.
Due to the changes made to the standards of organic towns,
the urban areas keep changing constantly, and the statistics
on urban population made during several national censuses
are not the same. Therefore, there is no solid foundation for
researchers to compare the urbanization level measurement
results at different time, even if on the basis of the same
national census, there is no way to compare the urbanization levels in different provinces or different areas. Xu et al.
(1997) and Yan (1994) described the phenomenon as the
statistical mystery in China. (2) To explore and improve
the urbanization level measurement methods. To improve
the population urbanization level index (Shen, 1997; Shen,
2005; Chen, 2003a, c, b, d; Wang, 2001; Feng, 2002), to
improve the land index of urbanization (Tan and Lv, 2003),
and to construct comprehensive indices based on such
factors as population, economy, society, living environment
(Li et al., 2004; Hua and Niu, 2003; Qiu et al., 2006; Du and
Wu, 2006), to measure the level of urbanization with grey
correlation analysis (Liu et al., 2005), SPSS analysis and DEA
(data envelopment analysis(Ni and Bao, 2007). In terms of
development trend, comprehensive index can better
explain the complicated situation of Chinese urbanization.
(3) To study the appropriate urbanization level in China.
Some scholars believed that the Chinese urbanization
lagged far behind (Wang, 2001); Zhong and Hu (2003)
pointed out the weakness in methodology, Ge et al. (2003)
and Zhou (2006) believed that the urbanization level in
China was in line with its economic growth. Some noticed
that during the 1980s and 1990s, the gap between urbanization and non-agricultural population employment level
gradually reduced (Fan and Tian, 2003), that China shall
moderately promote urbanization and the goals should not
be set too high (Chen et al. 1999; He and Zhang, 2000; Peng
et al, 2005). Chen et al. (2006) calculated and concluded
that the Chinese urbanization would reach its peak around
2050, and its saturation value is about 80%. Therefore, we
should pay more attention on the quality of urbanization
(Zhou, 2006).

5.3.

Dynamics of Chinese urbanization

5.3.1. Mechanism for Chinese urbanization

The mechanism of Chinese urbanization has always been a
focus of study for the domestic and international academic
community. Western classical theories on urbanization
mechanism as well as the research results concluded in
other developing countries were introduced to China and

114
had profound impact on domestic scholars. These theories
are mainly on population moving and relocation, economic
explanations, transport and communication, policies and
institutions. Moreover, the introduction to China of the
research progress on neo-liberal economics, neo-institutional economics, and neo-economic geography as well as
the market-oriented economy, institutional changes and
economic globalization caused by global political and economical pattern brought changes for studying the mechanism of Chinese urbanization.
Economy, politics, and population are closely related to
population urbanization in China (Ma, 1990a, b; Zeng and Liu,
2006). The interest relationship chain composed of comparative interests, supplementary interests, and optional interests
serves as the basic dynamic causing city agglomeration (Feng,
2005).
The evolution of industrial structure interacts with
regional urbanization, for the orderly evolution of industrial
structure results in the changes of urbanization mechanism
and different models of regional urbanization; while urbanization supports, drives and bears the evolution of regional
industrial structure (Li and Li, 2003; Li et al., 2004). The
industrialization and the structural transition of rural
laborers are the main driving force promoting Chinese
urbanization (Fan, 1998; Sun, 1992; Miao, 1998; Cui and
Ma, 1999). Collective economy and township enterprises
(Cui and Ma, 1999), non-governmental economy and specialized industry cluster (Qian, 2004), foreign investment
and export-oriented industrialization; these gradually
became the mainstream of the studies on the industrialization as a driving factor. In other words, the industrialization
in China adopted a path of dual urban and rural development after 1978, urbanization is along with industrialization; on the one hand, high consumption demand promoted
economic growth and made the urban lifestyle extend
rapidly to urban and rural areas; on the other hand, it also
helped to get foreign investment and technologies (Gu,
2004). The development of the tertiary industry, such as the
development of tourism (Lu et al., 2006; Zhou and Yu, 2004;
Zhou and Liu, 2005) promoted the rapid urbanization (Liu,
2000; Chen et al, 2004; Lu and Chen, 2005) and improved
quality of Chinese urbanization (Du, 2005). The unsatisfactory development of the service sector will cause a lagged
employment structure transition and a low urbanization (Ma
and Yin, 2001).
The transition of employment structure and the population moving are leading factors driving the Chinese urbanization (Ma, 1990a, b; Cai, 1990; Zhang and Yao, 1997; Zhao
and Zhu, 1998; Liu, 2000). The wave of farmer workers
results in crisis to the dual structure system formed during a
long period of time and promotes the Chinese urbanization
(Zhang and Yao, 1997). The minimum economic barrier of
urbanization plays an important role in realizing a successful
urbanization of rural population going to cities, while the
core rule of the mechanism is the balance between the
salary level of working population engaging in pillar industries of employment structure and the commodity price
level in cities (Zhang et al., 2003). The employment
structure transition lagging behind is a main obstacle
preventing Chinese urbanization (Li et al., 2004). Education
is of vital importance to urbanization, and vice versa (Zhang
et al., 2003; Liu, 2000, 2001; He, 2001).

Chaolin Gu et al.
Other driving factors include transportation (Chen, 2004),
communication (Yu 1988; Jiang, 2002a, b; Wang and Ning,
2004) and the infrastructure (Liu et al., 2006; Jiang et al,
2005; Li et al., 2005). Chinese urbanization interacts with
the development of transport network and the two serve as
cause and effect to each other (Chen, 2004). Urbanization
also interacts with industrialization and informatization
(Jiang, 2002a, b). In the 21st Century, city network composed of information cities appeared in China, and the
Internet trunk lines connecting Beijing, Shanghai, and
Guangzhou comprise the core of long-distance electronic
communication in China. The construction of network
infrastructure reinforces the competitiveness of cities,
while geographic factors still play an important role during
this process (Wang and Ning, 2004).
Such factors promoting Chinese urbanization as openingup, new international division of labour, and economic
globalization have been topics in 1980s and became the
direction of rising studies in the middle and late 1990s. The
geopolitics and the general international competition pattern
have important and direct impact on Chinese urbanization,
while the industrial policies and urban development models in
China are also closely related to globalization (Zhao,
1999; Zhang et al., 2000; Guan, 2001). After 1996, the rapid
urbanization was the result of the joint efforts of the
government and the market, being promoted mainly by the
tertiary industry; to continuously promote the reform of
marketization and to deepen opening up, to innovate international trade and system;these will further speed up Chinese
urbanization (Chen et al., 2004; Lu and Chen, 2005). Also, the
local market is becoming the leading factor deciding urban
development and even regional competitiveness (Zhao,
2006a, b, c, d). The impact of economic globalization on
urban development is profound: urbanization progresses more
rapidly, more new cities appear, big cities continuously grow
rapidly, there are several metropolitan areas, suburban areas
become ourishing together with the central urban areas,
several metropolitan places are to be included in the
global city system (China Urban Development Strategy
Research Project Team organized by the State Ministry of
Construction, 1999). The opening-up greatly promoted the
construction of mega-city regions and the growth of urban
space (Li et al., 2004), resulting in a new trend for urban
spatial development in China. Under the economic globalization and regional economic integration, rational competitiveness and technology progress gathered in big and mediumsized cities, while cities shaped the innovation with material
and energy input, innovation also affected cities with material and energy output, with time and space as the frame of
reference, the interaction between urbanization and innovation had distinct features (Wang et al., 2007).
In the eld of studying urbanization mechanism, since the
late 1990s, the academic community reviewed and
reected on the main research results in the main driving
factors, internal and external causes, industrial structure,
main elements agglomeration, institutions, and education,
proposing a diverse urbanization mechanism or an urbanization mechanism (Ning, 1998; Zhou, 1997; Ning, 2000; Xia
and Li, 2000; Zhang, 2003; Xu et al., 2007).
Urbanization is closely related to resources and environment, therefore, the following analysis and researches
greatly enrich Chinese urbanization mechanism: the analysis

Progress in research on Chinese urbanization

on natural resources and capital (Jin and Qin, 2004; Zhao,
1999), the studies on restricting elements, such as ecological environment (Murray and Cook, 2002; Xue and Dou,
2003; Huang and Fang, 2003; Liu et al., 2005,2006; Liu and
Song, 2005; Liu, 2006; Gao et al., 2003), water resources
(Huang, 1958; Mou and Liu, 1994), land resources (Xiong
et al., 2006; Zhang and Zhang, 2004; Gao et al., 2001; An
et al., 2002; Hao, 1994; Shen, 2001; Shen and Ye, 2004),
climate change (Zhang, 1983, 1984; Shen, 1986; Chen and
Pan, 1997; Zhou, 1983; Zhou and Zhang, 1982), natural
disasters (Gu et al., 1992; Xu et al., 2006). From the
perspective of realizing sustainable development, a new
direction is the focus on ecology, and the inevitable trend is
sustainable ecological planning (Cheng and Wang, 1998) and
ecological control (Cook, 2007b, Li et al., 2005).

5.3.2. Roles of the institutions and governments

Governmental intervention is of vital importance in controlling Chinese urbanization. During the process of reforms,
Chinese government played a leading role by setting up and
carrying out relevant public policies in such elds as the
moving of rural laborers to cities, the land property ownership and land-use models, the adjustment made to administrative division, as well as the increase of amount and size
of cities (Gu and Gu, 2006; Mou and Liu, 1994), and the
changes of administrative division, the creation of new
towns, and the progress of population urbanization with
the help of population moving policies and organic town
construction policies (Ma, 1990a, b). The policies played a
more important role than economic growth on population
moving. From the collective planned moving in the 1950s to
the moving to rural and remote areas in the 1960s and 1970s,
in the 1980s, with the free economic elements being
reinforced, many policies, including those on population,
tended to be directive instead of being compulsory. Accordingly, the population moving tended to be more natural and
the improvement of moving rate promoted the Chinese
urbanization (Cai, 1990). The government also promoted
the bottom-to-top urbanization and export-oriented urbanization. The former one was approved or supported by the
government (Liu, 1998), for the state guidelines and government, farmers, external factors (domestic and foreign
capital) jointly created a bottom-to-top urbanization (Cui
and Ma, 1999), contributing to the formation of Chinese
urbanization model in collective economic and development
zones in Jiangsu Province during which the government
played a leading role (Gu, 2004). The rural collective ownership system also resulted in the formation of a decentralized rural urbanization model in the Pearl River Delta Area
(Li and Li, 2005). The alliance between the government and
leading companies that is similar to that in western countries
has been formed in Chinese cities and greatly promoted urban
growth and even became the leading factor driving urban
development in the construction of development zones (Luo
and Shen, 2006a, b). The government could directly affect the
spatial pattern of the urbanization through the means of city
planning so as to achieve sustainable urbanization (Wang,
1997; Qiu, 2002; Wei and Yan, 2004; Li et al., 2005; Ding
et al., 2003; Wang, 2003).
But to promote Chinese urbanization is not all that government and institutions have done, for with some traditional

115
institutions and policies, the spatial ow and concentration of
main production elements were not reasonable, resulting in
the imbalance of urbanization and man-made uctuations (Lv,
1995; Liu, 2000; Zhu, 2003). After the reform and opening-up,
being driven by such factors of performance and interests for
local government, the Chinese urbanization faced unique
institutional background and conditions, which causes many
traps and difculties for urbanization (Zhao, 2006a, b, c, d).
Currently, the supervision on urban construction, the examination and evaluation on performance, the urban nancial
system, and land-use system, all these factors have profound
impact on the actual performance of municipal government.
With the impact, the actual performance of municipal government deviated in certain degree from the original plans of
realizing a harmonious urban and rural development, of
promoting domestic demand through urbanization, of solving
the problems concerning agriculture, farmers and countryside,
and of promoting intensive urban development, making cities
tend to focus on production, while the capacity of gathering
population becomes relatively weak, and therefore urbanization lags behind economic growth at the institutional level
(Cai, 2006). The consequences include the problems of current
household registration system (Yu, 1994), the defects of
current farming land acquisition system and compensation
system for farmers losing farming land (Liu, 2006), which
resulted in the high cost of urbanization and a series of
problems in urban villages and in the areas between the urban
and rural areas (Fang et al., 1999).

5.3.3. Impacts of reforms on Chinese urbanization

The impact of reforms on Chinese urbanization is mainly
shown in the form of institutional changes. At macroscopic
level, with the reform, China participated in the international
division of labor and global economic system, which greatly
changed the macro political and economic patterns of Chinese
urbanization. After the reform and opening-up, the urbanization model with government playing a leading role was
gradually replaced by the model featuring institutional planning and investment guiding (Chen et al., 2004). The coexistence of traditional institutions and market-adjusted system
as well as the regional diversity nally resulted in the
polarization in Chinese urbanization (Liu, 1998). It is therefore
required to deepen the reform on marketization so as to
reduce the conicts caused by a segmented urban and rural
dual system; while on the other hand, it is also required to
construct a rural social security system and land-use transfer
system so as to loosen the control on household registration
system and to increase urbanization efciency while reducing
both urbanization risk and transaction cost (Chen et al., 2004).
The successful rural and urban reforms are closely related
to the appearance and growth of oating population, while
the opening-up policies and the introduction of foreign
capital and technologies are closely related to specialized
groups with high level of income (Gu and Kesteloot, 1997a, b).
To be more specic, the major institutional innovation
measures promoting Chinese urbanization include: (1) the
innovation on, and adjustments made, to administrative
division system (Wang, 2002a, b, c; Zhang et al., 2002; Wei
and Yan, 2004); (2) the reform of production system and the
establishment of modern enterprise system (Ning, 2000; Qian,
2004; (3) the reforms on household registration system and

116

Chaolin Gu et al.

population movement system (Zhu, 2006; Liu, 2000; Gu and

Kesteloot, 1997a, b); (4) reforms on land systems and housing
systems as well as the establishment and improvement of land
markets and housing markets (Dong et al., 1993; Du and Xu,
1997; Shi et al., 2000; Zhou et al., 2006; Gong and Xia, 2007;
Gu et al., 2003; Zhao, 2001; Zhou and Meng, 1998; Zhang,
2003; Zhou and He, 2006; Shi and Li, 2006; Zhang et al., 1998);
(5) reforms on the urban construction investment system, on
the nancial system and on the taxation system (Lv, 1995;
Wang, 1995; Cheng, 1995; Dong and Zeng, 2002; Zhang et al.,
1998).

5.4.

Processes of Chinese urbanization

5.4.1. Studies on processes of Chinese urbanization

On the basis of urbanization levels, social and economic
development statusand important historical events,
researchers divided Chinese urbanization process into some
stages so as to study their respective features. Although
they have not reached agreement on the starting time and
specic stages of urbanization progress in China, yet most
scholars agree that there are two turning points during this
process, the one is the adoption of reform and opening-up
policies and the other is the 1990s (Zhou, 1986; Ma, 1990a,
b; Zhao, 1996; Yeh et al., 2006; Yao et al., 1997; Zhou and
Cao, 1999).
Since the Peoples Republic of China was founded in 1949,
urban population has grown rapidly in China, but the
urbanization progress uctuated greatly and the speed was
relatively slow (Wang and Han, 1986). During 19641980, the
urban population growth mainly occurred in medium-sized
and small cities, while towns were underdeveloped, but the
population in mega-cities had been well under control (Zhou
and Yang, 1986). In 1988, the population urbanization
entered the early and middle stages of urbanization (Ma,
1990a, b). During nearly two decades after 1978, the big ups
and downs of urbanization basically came to an end, China
realized sustainable growth and entered the middle and
acceleration stage; the regional focus of urbanization changed: the east grew faster than the middle and the west, the
south grew faster than the north; the status of small cities in
urban system had been improved, the actual population
growth in big cities slowed down greatly; some cities started
to become internationalized; suburbanization started in
some big cities; some urban areas and metropolitan areas
started to form; the social polarization within cities aggravated (Zhou and Cao, 1999).
Zhao (1996) believed that the urbanization progress in
China after the reform and opening-up was quite normal.
Some other scholars disagree. Zhu and Yu (2000) argued that
there was no basic condition for an accelerated Chinese
urbanization progress, which makes it a dilemma for the
country. Lu and Yao (2007) believed that during last decade,
the Chinese urbanization progress deviated from the principle of gradual development and the progress was too
radical and out of control.
Some scholars focus their studies on certain period or
certain areas, Huang (1951) studied the portal cities in
China, while He et al. (2002) and Cook (2006, 2007) studied
the urbanization progress in Beijing, Gao and Wu (2005)

focused on the city of Shanghai, and Lin and Zuo (2007)

studied the urbanization process in Xiamen.
5.4.2. Factors affecting Chinese urbanization processes
Factors affecting the Chinese urbanization process include
growth rate, amount, density, and movement of population
(Wang and Han, 1986; Zhou and Yang, 1986), social development and economic growth (He et al., 2002), political
factors (Li, 2000a, b), institutional and system innovations
(Tang, 2000; Liu, 1998; Shang, 1996; Fang, 1999; Yang
(2000)), city planning (Gao and Wu, 2005; Lu and Yao,
2007; Wang and Han, 1986; Lin and Zuo, 2007), ecological
and cultural elements (Peng and Fang, 2000; Lan and Chen,
2006). Among the most important factors are land system
reforms (Yeh rt al., 2006), the choice of industrial policies
and of leading industries (Geng and Gu, 2007). Factors
including the governmental actions of city planning and
industrial development policies as well as the original urban
pattern and ancient urban structure formed during 3,000
years decide the basic urbanization process in Beijing (He
et al., 2002). The basic urban construction framework based
on concentric ring roads and radiating road network has
profound impact on the expansion model of suburbanization
in Shanghai (Gao and Wu, 2005).

5.5.

Space of Chinese urbanization

In the early 20th Century, Chinese urban geographers made

initial analysis on the distribution of cities in China (Shen,
1937), as well as the location of city, urban structure, and
functioning of following cities: Wuxi (Wang, 1935), Chongqing
(Chen, 1943), Chengdu (Shen and Sun, 1947), Nanjing (Zhao
and Bai, 1950), and Baotou (Luo et al., 1952). In the 1980s,
the studies on the urban spatial structure were mainly based
on the translated foreign theories to explore the issues of the
concept and types of urban spatial structure, the evolution
rules of regional structure, the dynamics, the reasonable
model, and the features of spatial structure of some cities
(Xu and Zhu, 1988). In the 1990s, the main issues of the studies
in the eld of urban geography include the optimization of
spatial structure in mega-cities, the expansion mechanism of
central cities and their spatial development trend (Ning and
Yan, 1993); other topics includes the evolution rules of spatial
structure of big cities, their expansion trend, and the changes
of functional land structure (Yu, 1993). To sum up, the studies
on the space of Chinese urbanization fall roughly into nine
categories as follows (5.5.1 to 5.5.9):
5.5.1. City-region relationship
The relationship between city and region is mutually
dependent, for a city comes into being based on regional
conditions, while a region becomes ourishing due to the
rising of cities. Song (1980) is the rst proposing the cityregion perspective, which emphasized that the overall city
planning and construction must take into consideration both
the city and the region, for the urban development is
closely related to regional growth with the features multileveled and open. According to the theory, the overall city
planning shall be based on regional growth in deciding the
property, scale of urban development as well as the general
spatial pattern of the city. Multi-leveled city-region system

Progress in research on Chinese urbanization

is a fundamental feature of urban economic areas in China.
Regional analysis and planning serve as the basis for city
planning, while city planning deepens and species regional
planning. Therefore, it is required to change the traditional
way of separating city planning from regional planning so as
to achieve breakthrough progress in both theories and
methods of city planning. Extensive studies have been made
on regional natural conditions, economic conditions, and
social conditions serving as the foundation for urban studies
and city planning.
During this period of time, some scholars studied the
regional economic development and its pattern based on
regional investigation (Gu and Zhao, 1995), the application
of central place theory in city planning (Yang, 1985), the
regional analysis in city planning (Cui, 1982), the division of
suburban areas (Wang, 1981), the analysis of factors affecting urban economic areas and the division of economic areas
(Chen, 1987; Zhou and Zhang, 2003). The urban studies at
regional level also include urban density and the spatial
distribution of cities in a region (Gu, 1995) the time-spatial
changes of cities and the types of urban land expansion (Zhuo
et al., 2003, 2006), the difference, efciency and features of
changes of urban development space in China (Yan and Lin,
2004; Liu et al., 2003; Li et al., 2005), the physical region of
cities (Zhou and Shi, 1995; Song et al., 2006), and the reorganization of city space in a region (Lv and Chen, 2006; Shen,
2006). Currently, with the rapid communication technological
progress, the economic globalization, the expansion of regional
scope for cities, the reinforcing of vertical connection, the
city-region perspective picks up more new features. Shen
(2006) held that marketization and globalization are remolding
the measurement system and the adjustments made to
urbanization progress are made at different levels of central
government, local governments, enterprises, and the public.
5.5.2. Urban forms
Since the 1980s, some scholars have explored the urban
forms of some cities (Shen, 1986), as well as the rules of
combination of different urban forms including concentric,
multi-centered, urban agglomeration, and belt-shaped
(Yang, 1981). In his Forms, Structure, Features, and Evolution of Chinese Cities, Wu (1990) studied the forms and
structures of hundreds of Chinese cities from social, economic, cultural, and natural approaches, exploring the
mechanism of city form evolution, predicting the development trend, and proposing reasonable development models.
Many other scholars studied the evolution of city forms and
general model of seaport and river harbor cities, including
Fuqing (Xu, 2002), Shijiazhuang (Xiao et al., 2003), Longhua
(Yu, Zeng and Jiang, 2001), and Wuxi (Yang, 2000), as well
as the development of urban spatial structural models in
China. During the process of studying spatial growth of
mega-cities, some scholars concluded that the urban growth
followed the rule of developing from concentric expansion
to decentralized form, the expansion along central axis and
nally to the belt-shaped growth form (Gu and Chen, 1994).
5.5.3. Urban spatial structure
In terms of the physical spatial structure of a city, some
scholars studied the space of leading cities such as Beijing
(Gu and Song, 2001), and Dalian (Li and Li, 2006; Li et al.,

117
2005), concluding that the functions of main elements in
the formation of city image are different from the three
cities.
The studies on urban social spatial structure mainly focus
on mega-cities including Beijing (Gu and Kesteloot, 1997a,
b; Gu et al., 2003), Shanghai (Li and Wang, 2006), Guangzhou (Xu et al., 1989; Wei et al., 2007; Zhou et al., 2006;
Zhou and Yan, 2006). Xu et al. (1989) held that the spatial
growth model of social areas in Guangzhou is in the shape of
a concentric oval extending toward the east and that,
during the historical urban development process, the city
land planning and housing distribution system contributed
the most to the formation of the model. Zhou and Yan
(2006) studied the typical blocks in Guangzhou and decoded
the urban space based on residential commuting behaviors,
concluding that the residential commuting behaviors reect
in a large sense the current spatial status and its evolution;
while at the same time, they are also related to social space
to a certain degree.
The results of studies on urban economic spatial structure
include the coexistence of old and new CBDs in Guangzhou,
the development by districts, the difference of development models and the obvious changes of spatial distribution
of nancing industry during the transitional period (Lin
and Yan, 2006). Yan et al. (2006) analyzed the human
factors affecting the changes of land use in the Pearl River
Delta Area.

5.5.4. Urban fringe

After the reform and opening-up, mega-cities grew rapidly
in China and there is a special region bordering both urban
and rural areas, which is known as the urban-rural joining
area or the urban fringe. In the mid 1980s, urban geographers started to study urban fringe and published a series of
research results (Gu, 1989; Cui and Wu, 1990; Wu, 1990; Lin
and Zang, 1991). Gu (1992, 1993) conducted on-site investigation in big cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Nanjing and studied systematically the features of
population, society, economy, land use, and regional space
of the leading urban fringe in China. Sun (1995) held that
the urban-rural fringe in China has a distinct characteristic
as the industry-oriented type, which is different from the
residential-oriented type in foreign countries. Recently,
since the market-oriented economy has initially been
established in China, there have been new changes occurred
to the leading urban fringe. Zhang and Xu (1997) proposed a
new research topic of urban fringe on the basis of the
previous results in the eld. Su et al. (2005) believed that it
is required adopting the concept of smart growth and
emphasizing the quality of growth. Recently, some scholars
explored such issues on leading urban fringe as the spatial
evolution mechanism, the sustainable development, and
the growth mechanism.

5.5.5. Semi-urbanization
Semi-urbanization is a transitional stage from countryside to
city. The research topics in the eld include the denition
and types of semi-urbanization (Jia and Liu, 2002), its main
characteristics (Liu et al., 2004), the causes of formation
and development trend (Liu et al., 2005; Zhu et al., 2006).

118
Semi-urbanized areas are those with most features of a
city yet are not cities according to administrative division,
mainly referring to the urban-rural joining areas, towns,
counties, and non-agricultural villages with developed
industry, and their development is mainly initiated by the
investment of non-agricultural industries, especially manufacturing industry, in suburban areas and in villages (Jia and
Liu, 2002). These areas feature the high degree of nonagricultural development, the extremely scattered industrial development and land development, the high proportion of non-local population, the villages in urban areas, and
the independent rural management system (Liu et al.,
2004). The small cities and towns in these areas will
undergo a step-by-step agglomeration development from
bottom to top (Liu et al., 2005).
5.5.6. Suburbanization
Since the middle 1990s, suburbanization has become an
important topic for researchers, who studied a series of
issues including the entrance value on suburbanization, the
mechanism for the formation of suburbanization, and the
control of suburbanization. Suburbanization is a stage of
absolute decentralization of a city after its central areas
have undergone the stages of absolute centralization, relative centralization, and relative decentralization, with population, industries, and business moving in turns from the
downtown areas toward the suburban areas and the population in central areas dropping in absolute amount (Chai,
1995). They applied the research results and methods on
suburbanization in western developed countries and took into
consideration the distinct characteristics in China, studied
Beijing (Zhou, 1996; Zong et al., 2002; Feng and Zhou, 2003),
Guangzhou (Xie and Ning, 2003), Shanghai (Li et al., 2003),
Shenyang (Zhou and Meng, 1997), Hangzhou (Zhou, 1997),
and Dalian (Cao and Chai, 1998), concluding that the
population growth in the downtown areas of these megacities slowed down recently, some cities even saw the
reduction of population, and the population density also
decreased, indicating that suburbanization started in these
cities. The suburbanization in China is totally different
from that in western countries, with such features as
passive suburbanization, residential suburbanization, the
expansion in rings, the coexistence of ourishing downtown
areas with suburbanization, and the social polarization
is not obvious (Gu, 1988; Zong et al., 2002; Feng and Zhou,
2003). The distance from the downtown area has great
impact on the process of urban land-use expansion
(Li, Fang and Piao, 2003). Some scholars also introduced
anti-urbanization phenomenon in the west and made tentative analysis on its impact on the studies of urbanization in
China (Yan, 1990).
5.5.7. Urban agglomeration
From urban agglomeration to city group, and then megalopolis, these concepts reect a process of continuous
development in the studies of urbanization space. Urban
agglomeration is a regional organization and originates from
the interaction among cities located close to each other in
an urbanized region; in other words, the appearance and
the development of urban agglomeration happen at a stage
with relatively high degree of urban development. In the

Chaolin Gu et al.
late 1980s, urban concentration areas started to appear in
more developed regions in China. Urban geographers studied these areas on the basis of foreign research results and
the distinct features and development trend of developed
urban areas in China (Sun, 1995). Li (1989) is the rst
focusing on the study of urban agglomeration. He introduced Gottmans theories on urban agglomeration and
explored the formation conditions, historical driving force,
current features, and future development of city groups
in the middle and lower reaches along the Yangtze River.
Li (1989) studied the features and formation conditions of
urban agglomeration, Xu (1992) analyzed the features and
development trend of cities in the Yangtze River Delta Area
and in the Pearl River Delta Area; other scholars also studied
the city agglomeration in Middle China (Wang et al., 2007).
Some scholars argued that the stability of spatial structure
of urban agglomeration in China is relatively low (Song
et al., 2006).

5.5.8. Metropolitan areas and megalopolis

Metropolitan areas and megalopolis are higher forms of
urban agglomeration, and the studies are sponsored by the
National Natural Science Foundation of China. Hu et. al.
(2000) published Studies on Spatial Centralization and
Decentralization of urban Agglomeration in Coastal Areas
in China. Zhou dened the terms of metropolitan area and
megalopolis as well as universal standards for the convenience of future studies. In the compilation of China urban
development strategy at the Turn of the Century organized
by the State Ministry of Construction, Gu (1997) studied the
policies on the development of metropolitan areas and
megalopolis. With the deepening of the research, some
scholars believed that metropolitan areas is a big population
core and its combination with the areas located close to it
with the tendency of integration in both social and economic elds; megalopolis is urban agglomeration composed
of several metropolitan areas, for example, the Pearl River
Delta Area is composed of six metropolitan areas, and the
Yangtze River Delta Area is composed of 13 metropolitan
areas. Recently, the researches on metropolitan areas and
megalopolis focus on the Yangtze River Delta Area (Huang
and Zhu, 2005; Xie et al., 2007), the Pearl River Delta Area,
and the main issues include the formation of metropolitan
areas and megalopolis, the development rules, the features
of distribution, their forms, dynamic process, and spatial
structural characteristics.
Ning (1998), Yan (1997), and Li et al., 1996, 1998 started
from dening metropolitan areas and analyzed the features
of the metropolitan areas in the Yangtze River Delta Area
and the Pearl River Delta Area, exploring the main formation elements and mechanism. He et al. (2003) simulated
and predicted the metropolitan areas development evaluation process, while Huang and Zhu (2005), Chen and Lv, 2007
studied the scientic planning on urban areas. Xie et al.,
2007 concluded that the spatial expansion of urban groups
in the Yangtze River Delta Area speeds up obviously. To sum
up, the general direction for Chinese urbanization progress
is metropolitan areas (Zong, 2001), while metropolitan
areas have become the basic cells of modern regional
development and the mainstream organization form of
urbanization (Wang, 2002a, b, c).

Progress in research on Chinese urbanization

5.5.9. Urban system
In terms of urban system theories, Gu (1987) rstly divided
organization structure of the urban system into four aspects
of regional spatial structure, urban rank-size, urban types
and regional functional structure, and urban network system. Theories and methods of urban system planning were
explored in China (Sun, 1984; Song and Gu (1988); Wu, 1989;
Wang, 1988, 1991; Wang, 1986; Chen and Liu, 1990; Ding,
1989). Yang (1987) studied the theories and made experimental verication on the denition of urban system, and
the corresponding model of rank-size of urban system. The
subsequent studies covered extensive elds of dening
urban system, constructing theoretical framework, analyzing current structure of urban systems at different levels
(province, city, and town), deciding on category standards,
and exploring development trend (Gu and Zhang, 1997). Yu
(1989) also analyzed the economic relationship among
different cities and between cities and regions, as well as
the degree of connection of information ows so as to
clarify the relations among different urban areas in a
region. Some scholars focused on the current features of
urban system and its formation mechanism as well as the
impact of information industry on urban system (Gu, 1997).
Other scholars introduced the theories of fractal and fractal
dimension to study the spatial structure of urban system
with both quantitative and qualitative methods (Chen,
1998a, b, 2004; Zhu and Wu, 2005).
As for the experimental researches on regional urban
system, in the last two decades Chinese urban geographers
have studied the urban systems in administrative regions,
drainage areas, and economic areas at different levels in
China. During early stage, some geographical institutes of
the Chinese Academy of Sciences and departments of
geography in some universities undertook the studies of
urban systems in middle and south Liaoning Province,
Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan, middle Hunan Province, and
Changchun City. First researchers engaging in the studies
of urban system in China include Song Jiatai and Gu Chaolin
from Nanjing University, Zhou Yixing and Yang Wuyang from
Peking University, and Xu Xueqiang from Sun Yat-sen University. In his Urban System in China, Gu (1992) systematically studied the origin and development of urban system
in China, analyzing such issues as self-organizing structure,
regional spatial structure, urban rank-size, urban type and
functional structure and urban network system of Chinese
urban system, as well as the conditions for the development
of urban system, the impact of urbanization level, urban
population growth, and national urban system development. Later on, other scholars also studied the features of
urban system in east coastal areas in China structure and
arrangement of the urban system (Liu, 1998), the urban
system along the Yangtze River (Ling and Xu, 2003), the
foundation for planning urban system in the Yangtze River
Delta Area (Gu, 1992), the planning of urban systems in
Henan, Gansu, Hunan, Guangxi, Sichuan and other provinces in middle and west China, as well as the rank-size
and development trend (Wang and Yuan, 1992). The studies
of regional urban system move from developed coastal areas
and river areas to inland areas.
As for the practice of urban system planning, in the 1980s,
Song and Gu (1988) proposed a theoretical framework of urban
system planning: three structures and one network on the

119
basis of foreign experiences and actual conditions in China,
which has been extensively accepted and applied by city
planning authorities in China. Urban geographers started to
undertake the task of compiling urban system planning in
many provinces and cities at different levels. Nanjing University held urban system planning workshops for the State
Ministry of Construction in the 1980s and 1990s, producing a
large amount of professional talents in the eld. The City
Planning Division of the State Ministry of Construction issued
Measures for Compiling Urban System Planning based on
previous experience, regulating the compilation procedures
and standards for urban system planning at different levels of
province, city, and other special zones, which have been
latterly adopted in the Law on City Planning. In recent years,
with economic globalization and domestic economic marketization, geographers and planner started to explore new
theories and methods on urban system planning (Gu and
Zhang, 1997) so as to study the evolution of urban system,
its reasonable model, structural adjustment and scientic
prediction instead of being satised with the general analysis
on three structures and one network. Ouyang emphasized
integral harmony and sustainable development in the planning
of urban agglomeration in the Pearl River Delta Area (Fang
et al., 1997), while Ding paid attention to the relationship
between regional social development and economic growth
and urban system during the urban system planning in
Zhejiang Province so as to explore an urban system planning
contributing more to the sustainable regional development.

5.6.

Rural urbanization

Since 1978, the economic reform centering on household

responsibility contract system has been gradually launched
in extensive rural areas in China, resulting in a large amount
of agriculture surplus laborers who gradually moved into the
secondary and the tertiary industries. In the middle and late
1980s, township enterprises were ourishing and became
the leading factor promoting rural urbanization. During this
period of time, the studies on rural urbanization made great
progress in both theories and practice (Zhou, 1997).
Scholars hold that rural urbanization is too important to be
ignored (Gao, 1990; Li, 1995) and they explored extensively
different aspects including its process (Sun and Lin, 1988;
Zhang and Gu, 2002), paths (Luo, 2004; Cao, 2001), models
(Chen, 2000a, b, c, d), mechanisms (Chen, 2000a, b, c, d; Li
and Sun, 2006; Li and Xie, 1997), institutions (Xie, 2005; Xiong
and Zeng, 1999), problems and solutions (Sun and Lin, 2000;
Shang, 1994), policy directions (Shi, 2002), urban and rural
integration (Xiu et al., 2004; Shi, 2003a, b; Wei, 1997; Zou and
Liu, 1997; Zhen, 1998), and future studies (Xue and Zheng,
2001).
Although the opinions differ in terms of spatial models of
multi-centered decentralized type (Shui and Wu, 1984) and
centralized type (Sui et al., 2001; Luo, 2004) as well in
urbanization paths, yet most scholars agree that with a dual
structure, rural urbanization will focus on the development
of small cities and towns (Chen, 2000a, b, c, d; Yi, 2000;
Zeng, 2000; Zhang et al., 2000; Chen, 2001). As for the
development of small cities and towns, there are also
different models focusing on industries, transportation,
market, tourism, and villages (Sui, Cao and Sun, 2001;

120
Luo, 2004), while to construct specialized towns is a special
way of developing small cities and towns (Shi, 2003b). The
initial driving force for rural urbanization is the strong will
of farmers (An et al., 2002), while the fundamental driving
factor and important support is the rising of township
enterprises (Sui, Cao and Sun, 2001). Its dynamic mechanism includes the conicts between rural labor and farming
land resource, the development of rural industries and
markets, the decentralization of large and medium-sized
cities, the governmental policies and administrative management (Li and Xie, 1997; Cao, 2001). There are different
models of Sunan, Wenzhou, and Pearl River Delta Area
Model (Sun and Lin, 1988). With the impact of both internal
and external factors (Chen, 2000a, b, c, d), along with the
elapse of time, the features and mechanisms of different
models also changed (Zhang and Gu, 2002). Recently, some
scholars proposed the assumptions on the dynamic system
for rural urbanization (Li and Sun, 2006).
Due to economic growth models and land management
system (Sun and Lin, 2000; Chen, 2002a, b), rural urbanization
resulted in a series of consequences including the sharp
reduction of farming land, the deterioration of environment,
and the low efciency of small cities and towns (Wang, 1999;
Chen and Wang, 1999), the interests of numerous farmers losing
farming land have been greatly damaged due to their losing the
status of a main body during the progress of urbanization
(Dong, 2005). Accordingly, we shall be extremely cautious
about rural urbanization (Chen and Wang, 1999), and the
inevitable trend is the acquisition (Song, 1997), the professional
management reform at the level of village (Yang and Zuo,
1996), the effective control and supervision (Li and Xie, 1997),
and the institutional innovation to realize a harmonious urban
and rural development (Zhang et al., 2006). Therefore, the
more appropriate paths are intensive urbanization with distinct
characteristics and content (Wang, 1999; Chen and Wang, 1999;
Shi, 2002), while village planning and the planning of new
residential communities in towns (Cao, 2001) and the overall
city planning at the level of county (Wu et al., 2005) will play
an important role during the process.
Some scholars proposed that urban and rural integration
is an inevitable trend of social development (Zou and Liu,
1997; Shi, 2003b), and the specic content of integration
includes urban and rural politics, economy, ecology, population, culture, and spatial integration (Zou and Liu, 1997; Zhen,
1998); urbanization and rural industrialization serve as its
dynamic mechanism (Zhen, 1998; Xiong and Zeng, 1999), an
integrated urban and rural market serves as its core. The urban
and rural integration shall be people-centered (Zhen, 1998)
and supported by city planning (Zou and Liu, 1997; Wei, 1997;
Zhen, 1998). As for actual practice, government authorities
and the academic community jointly launched experiments on
institutional reforms including promoting counties with
cities, upgrading counties to cities, and the construction
of small cities and towns, proposing through comparing and
summarizing the results, the model in the Pearl River Delta
Area featuring promoting rural areas with urban growth, the
model in Shanghai featuring an integrated urban and rural
planning, the model in Beijing featuring coordinating industries and agriculture and integrating urban and rural areas,
and the model of urban and rural interaction (Shi, 2003a).
Some scholars studied the urban and rural integration in
Shanghai (Shi, 2003b) and in Northeast China (Xiu et al., 2004).

Chaolin Gu et al.
There have always been debates on urban and rural
integration. Zhong (1994) argued that the only goal of this
was to create a balanced urban and rural development at a low
level, which is a typical model of planned economic development and a model of local protection. While Wei (1997)
believed that urban and rural integration is a special model
of urbanization and Zhen (1998) further argued that this didnt
mean an even urban and rural development on an equal basis
and this is an inevitable choice of urban development pattern
in China. Yuan et al. (2005) believe that China is still during a
period of rapid urbanization promoted by traditional industries,
therefore an early schedule of urban and rural integration isnt
good for a sustainable economic and social growth.

5.7.

Comparative studies of urbanization

The studies of urbanization have always been important for

urban geographers (Gu and Xu, 1999; Shen and Cui, 1990;
Yan, 1994; Shi, 2001). Since the 1990s, domestic academic
community started to recognize the distinct characteristics
of Chinese urbanization and managed to join the international academic community in the studies of urbanization,
which became the mainstream of Chinese urbanization
studies. On the one hand, they explored the theories on
urbanization by introducing the western research results on
urbanization in such elds of modern urban sociology and
urban geography, including the theories on urbanization by
Manuel (2006a) that politics, power, real estate interests,
community motivation, and social conicts are key elements
in understanding the factors promoting urbanization (Manuel,
2006b), as well as the commentary introduction of the new
progress in western urban geography (Yan et al., 1994). Gu
(2003) started from the analysis on the dynamic mechanism of
urbanization in early stage and studied the international
urbanization, covering an extensive eld of the process of
urbanization under the background of industrialization and six
theoretical frameworks of research on urbanization in the
developing countries, that is, the classical and traditional
approach, the top-to-bottom development model, the historical approach, the radical politics-economics approach, the
bottom-to-top development model, and post-modernist
approach. He analyzed the urbanization progress in the world
with the background of globalization, managing to construct
an international exchange platform for the studies of Chinese
urbanization and concluding that the Chinese urbanization is
different from those in other countries, so scholars shall
construct the new basic theoretical framework for the studies
in this eld.
On the other hand, the scholars also explored the actual
Chinese urbanization by applying foreign theories and
experience. The issues they studied include the features
of urbanization in the world (Yang, 1990; Wang and Gu,
2002), the problems (Wang and Gu, 2002), the comparison
of different urbanization levels (Li, 1986), the anti-urbanization (Yan, 1990; Huang, 1997a, b), and the development
trend (Peter and Ji, 1992; Wu, 1995; Shen, 2000). At the
same time, they also focus on individual countries, such as
the process, trend and features of urbanization in US
(Gormanskinsky, 1986; Zhao, 1993; Tang, 1994; Chen,
2003a, b, c, d; Xu and Cai, 2006; Song and Li, 2006; Liu
et al., 2007; Wang, 2007), the city forms, development
process and trend in Japan (Wu, 1992; Wang and Peng, 2004;

Progress in research on Chinese urbanization

Gu et al., 2007), the urbanization in Canada (Han and Chi,
1995), the urbanization and urban and rural integration in
France (Huang, 1997a, b), the urbanization in Singapore (Li,
1983), the unbalanced urbanization model in South Korea
(Jian and Liu, 1997), and the urbanization path in Rangoon,
Burma (Fei, 1999). The future urbanization progress in
China can learn some lessons from Japan, whose capital
city and the world city Tokyo grows on a continuous basis
(the rapid centralization of tertiary industry in metropolis,
the construction of coastal sub-centers, the construction of
Tsukuba Express, and the construction of new portal city of
Yokohama), the stagnancy in development of regional cities,
and the declining of local cities (Gu et al., 2007), from the
development of medium-sized cities in the US (Zhao, 1993),
from suburbanization and re-urbanization (Tang, 1994),
from the new trend of multi-centered of center-free
metropolitan areas and the agglomeration of urban systems
(Xu and Cai, 2006), and from the urban and rural integration
in France (Huang, 1997a, b). Some scholars proposed the
concept of a proportional urbanization (Yao and Kiyonori,
2000), emphasizing city planning and the construction of
transport and communication network (Liu et al., 2007), the
construction of information cities (Song and Li, 2006) and
multi-centered metropolitan areas (Chen, 2003a, c, b, d),
the internalization of Chinese cities (Li, 1994) and the
possible urbanization paths (Jian and Liu, 1997). Some
scholars suggested that the Chinese urbanization should
learn lessons from the experience of foreign countries and
manage to avoid the urban problems occurred during the
urbanization progress in Europe, Japan, the US, Latin
America, and Africa (Qiu, 2004ab). Urban regeneration is
now needed in some Chinese cities, for example, and
lessons can be learned from the experience of the UK and
other countries in this process (Cook, et al., 2008).

5.8. Impacts of globalization on Chinese

urbanization
Domestic scholars deepened their studies on globalization
and Chinese urbanization step by step. At the early stage,
only a few scholars recognized the important impact of
international political and economic strategic patterns on
Chinese urbanization even during the Cold War period. They
took foreign investment as an important external variable
or driving factor and studied its impact on the regional
urbanization (mainly the Pearl River Delta Area) and possible consequences of urbanization. With the introduction of
theories on globalization and on international urbanization,
domestic scholars started to include Chinas urban system
once again in the world urban system so as to explore the
Chinese urbanization from a broader world perspective in
politics, economy, cultural interaction, and especially the
free ow of products, labor, capital, and technologies.
Globalization affects the process of Chinese urbanization
(Zhao, 1999; Wu and Gu, 2005; Shi and Lin, 2002) and has
profound impact on the development and changes of urban
spatial structure from urban-rural dual spatial structure to
integrated multi-centered network structure (Lv et al.,
2006). The largescale urban projects reect the general
process of globalization affecting urban and regional development and become a new human phenomenon and

121
landscape (Zhao, 2006a, b, c, d). During the era of
globalization, the new urban network is forming (Shi and
Lin, 2002), making it of vital importance to participate in
the process of globalization by constructing international
metropolises (Gu and Xu, 1999; Gu et al., 2005; Cook,
2006). China should re-organize a spatial structure of
national urban system which center on hub cities in
accordance with the trend of globalization, should construct
corresponding supporting system matching globalization and
re-construct national urban systems (Gu et al., 2005). Some
scholars explored the strategy for urban development and
proposed new urban development strategies in response to
knowledge economy and globalization (Zhao, 1999; Qiu,
2003a, 2003bc, 2003d). Therefore, domestic researchers
shall start from globalization and spatial studies to discuss
such issues as the world cities, the urbanization, the cityregion structure, the multi-national spatial connection,
transformation of urban spatial structure, the imbalance
in regional development, and the social polarization (Jian,
2004).

5.9.

Regional urbanization

The studies on regional urbanization are important for the

study on Chinese urbanization. In terms of the regions
scholars study, most are the provinces and cities in the east
China and only a few scholars studied the middle and the
west China. While in East China, most studies are on the
Pearl River Delta Area and the Yangtze River Delta Area, and
some scholars made comparative studies on regional urbanization (Yi and Su, 2004).
5.9.1. Urbanization in the Pearl River Delta Area
The studies of urbanization in the Pearl River Delta Area focus
on such issues as the dynamic mechanism (Zhong and Yuan,
1993; Chen and Shen, 2004), the development models (Shen
et al., 2006; Li, 2002), the evolution of spatial structure (Hu
et al., 2003; Liu and Liang, 2005; Yang and Li, 2007), the multiregional urbanization and regional integration (Lin, 1997; Sit
and Yang, 1997a, b, c; Li, 1997; Yan and Leng, 1997), the
development and semi-urbanization of urban fringe (Liu and
Liang, 2005; Zheng et al., 2003), the development strategy
(Tang and Tang, 2002), and the sustainable development(Xu and
Zhang, 2001; Liu, 2001). In view of research focus, it changed
from the previous topics of the external variants, the bottomto-top model, the rural industrialization, and the hidden
urbanization to the dual urbanization and the metropolis.
The moving of manufacturing industry from Hong Kong to
Guangzhou did not show the tendency of spatial concentration
in downtown areas of metropolis, while the input of capital
and the introduction of manufacturing equipments promoted
the rural industrialization in the metropolitan area, changing
the culture, behavior and lifestyle of local people (Lin, 1997).
Shenzhen City developed into a modern city with the capital
ow from Hong Kong, while the expansion of Hong Kong into
Shenzhen and the economic inland areas in the Pearl River
Delta Area helped to promote its industrial upgrading and to
consolidate its status as the international trade, nancing, and
navigation center; the multi-regional economic growth was
regulated by the market, spontaneous, and non-governmental
(Sit and Yang, 1997a, b, c). The urban form of Hong Kong is the

122
reinforcing of its functions as business center, the expansion of
business centeral area, the restructuring of original industrial
area, and the re-division of entire urban social geography (Li,
1997). The existing problems preventing Hong Kong and
Shenzhen from achieving a harmonious development include
the challenges of external factors, the lack of communications
and coordination between two governments, the low level of
economic cooperation, and the disconnection of infrastructure
(Yan and Leng, 1997).
During 1980s1990s, the urbanization in the Pearl River
Delta Area tended to decentralize and to concentrate in newly
special economic zones before the appearing of a new
tendency that, with the guidance of the state authorities,
the urbanization concentrated in leading central cities once
again. The complicated realities of dual urbanization
imposed great challenges on urbanization theories constructed
based on cities or small cities and towns (Shen et al., 2006).
The export-oriented economic growth, the urban agglomeration economy, the contributions made by oating population,
the administrative support, and the expansion of large and
medium-sized cities promoted the urbanization progress (Hu
et al., 2003; Chen and Shen, 2004), together with the growth
of urban construction in core areas and the transport-based
growth (Hu et al., 2003). Other scholars studied the semiurbanization in Dongguan (Zheng et al., 2003), the increasingly
great impact of the urbanization in central towns on the urban
spatial structure in the Pearl River Delta Area, and the changes
of models from loose structure to gradually decentralized
structure of point-axis model and point-axis-agglomeration area (Yang and Li, 2007).

5.9.2. Urbanization in the Yangtze River Delta Area

The recent studies on urbanization in the Yangtze River
Delta Area focus on the following issues: the urban land
expansion in the Yangtze River Delta Area (Li et al., 2007),
the cooperation among cities (Luo and Shen, 2007), the
mega-city regions (Zhang, 2006), development trend and
strategy of the urbanization (Marton, 1996; Yao and Chen,
1998; Duan, 2002); the features of urbanization in Jiangsu
Province (Tang and Yao, 1999a), the development trend
(Tang and Yao, 1999b), the regional difference and development models (Wang and Yu, 2003, 2004; Zhu et al., 2006),
the dynamic mechanism (Wang, 2005), the environment
effect (Liu, 1998); transition of urbanization in Zhejiang
Province (Yang, 2000; Ye et al., 2005; Li and Wang, 2002),
and the path (Yang, 2000; Dai, 2002; Wang, 2002a, b, c;
Chen, 2003a, c, b, d).
The shortcomings of the Sunan Model become increasingly obvious and innovations are required on institutions,
management, and organization (Tang and Yao, 1999b; Yao
et al., 2001), and to reinforce the agglomeration effect of
industrialized space (Zhang, 1996; Yang, 2000) is an urgent
task. The leading factors promoting rapid urbanization
progress include the promotion of industrialization, the
export-oriented economy, the contributions of the metropolitan economy and non-governmental economy, and the
administrative effect (Wang, 2005; Yang, 2000). Applicable
policies decided the direction of economic growth,
while the economic growth has always been the leading
factor affecting the expansion of urban land-use (Ma et al.,
2004). In other words, the general conclusion is that the

Chaolin Gu et al.
megalopolis in Asia must be constructed on the understanding of local economic reforms (Marton, 1996).
During 19792005, the urban area in the Yangtze River
Delta Area has grown rapidly, both fractal dimension and
stability of its spatial structure uctuated and the spatial
development tracks of urban growth include one core and
two belts, two cores and three belts, four cores and
four belts, and ve cores and ve belts (Li et al., 2007),
the leading feature and the basic development trend of
urban spatial evolution is urban and rural integration (Yao
and Chen, 1998). The urbanization in the Yangtze River
Delta Area is to promote the development of mega-cities, to
improve the central functions of large cities, to actively
develop medium-sized and small cities, and to reinforce the
construction of leading central towns (Cheng, 2000; Wang
and Yu, 2003, 2004), so as to form multi-centered network
metropolitan area (Zhang, 2006).
The horizontal urbanization model in the border of
provinces administrative regions has such features of being
marginal, inconsistent, competitive and cooperative. But
being affected by the shear effect in urban fringes,
competition usually looms larger than cooperation and
there will generally be cut-throat competition (Zhu et al.,
2006). According to the researches made on the Yangtze
River Delta Area, the effective cooperation among different
cities is decided by following factors: the mechanism,
process, quality and elds of cooperation, the choice of
partners, the function of share-taking parties in the formation of partnership (Luo and Shen, 2007).
5.9.3. Urbanization in other areas in East China
The content of studies made on the urbanization in other
areas in East China includes: the comprehensive measurement on the urbanization level in Shandong Province (Shi,
1991; Fang et al., 2006), the framework and internal driving
force on rural urbanization the relationship between the
development of infrastructure and service facilities and
urbanization (Shi, 1991; Zhou and Wang, 2006; Zhu et al.,
2006), the studies of semi-urbanization (Zhu et al., 2006),
the urbanization trend in Beijing and the countermeasures
to be adopted in suburban areas (Chen, 1996a, b), the
improvement and development model for urban agglomeration in the middle Liaoning Province in northeast China
(Dong and Liu, 1991), the relationship between urbanization
and industrial changes in northeast China (Yang et al.,
2004), the integration and control mechanism of urban
agglomeration in northeast China (Wang and Wu, 2004),
and the impact of urbanization in east coastal areas on
environment (Pei, 1999).
5.9.4. Urbanization in Middle China
The studies of urbanization in the middle China focus on
Anhui Province (Yu, 1988), Shanxi Province (Zhang and Guo,
2000; An, 2000), Hubei Province (Li et al., 2003), and
Jiangxi Province (Ye et al., 2003). In general, since most
cities in the area are in the initial stage of urbanization, for
example, as for the Taiyuan metropolis (Guo and Bai, 2000),
itis still weak in export-oriented economy, public investment and consumption capacity (Li et al., 2003), therefore,
most study topics focus on traditional elds of urbanization
and the analysis on affecting factors.

Progress in research on Chinese urbanization

5.9.5. Urbanization in West China
After the reform and opening-up, few scholars have studied
the urbanization in west China but after the implementation
of the Great West Development Strategy, more and more
studies have been made on extensive issues of the choice of
urbanization path (Li and Liu, 2001), the urbanization
development strategy (Guan and Yao, 2002), the urbanization model (Wang and Hou, 2002), and the issues of
development (Guan and Yao, 2002), as well as the urbanization process and features in certain provinces or cities
(Zhang et al., 2000; Hou et al., 2000; Liu, 2000). The
institutional factors play a decisive role during the urbanization progress in the west China (Gao and Zeng, 2006),
transport plays an extremely important role in the urban
development and urban groups (Wang et al., 2004), while
the construction of development zones has become one of
the factors promoting the evolution of urban economic and
social spatial polarization (Wang, 2006).
To sum up, in the last three decades, domestic scholars
have obtained great achievements in the studies of Chinese
urbanization, and there are also many problems too. Firstly,
the mainstream research focus of the domestic academic
community usually lagged behind the complicated and vital
urbanization realities, behind the actual demand of the state
or local governments, and even behind the promulgation of
relevant regulations and policies. Secondly, most research
results are summaries of existing theories or practices instead
of making independent deduction and analysis; most scholars
mainly engaged in applied research to serve as advisors for the
government and planners instead of making theoretical
research. Thirdly, in order to communicate with the international academic community, many international cooperation
and exchange activities and events have been organized, yet
in terms of actual effect, the emphasis was still put on the
introduction of foreign theories and practices on urbanization.
Fourthly, institutions, researchers and research activities in
the eld have close relationship with governments at different
levels, which will inevitably affect the approach, perspective,
point of view, and conclusion of nal research results. Few
non-mainstream research results on urbanization can be found
in authoritative and mainstream academic journals.

6. Major academic activities and important

events on Chinese urbanization
6.1. The Central Committee of the CPC and the
State Council
6.1.1. Forecast and planning of designated cities
In order to promote Chinese urbanization, to make the
distribution of cities and towns more scientic and reasonable, and to promote harmonious national economic growth
and social stability, the General Ofce of State Council
transmitted on 16 November 1990 Report on Forecast and
Planning of designated cities in China issued by the State
Ministry of Civil Affairs.7
7

(1990) No. 65 Document issued by General Ofce of State

Council.

123
6.1.2. Report on the development of human settlement
The Chinese government submitted to the United Nations in
1994 the Report on the Development of Human Settlement
in the Peoples Republic of China and conrmed the goal of
achieving 45% urbanization rate by 2010. According to the
report, urbanization is an inevitable process for the national
economic growth and the construction of modernity, therefore the active urbanization policies are important to
promote domestic demand and economic growth, to optimize economic and social structure, and to promote
national modernization.
6.1.3. Changing from traditional agricultural country to
industrial country
In September 1997, Jiang Zemin delivered his Report at the
15th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,8
proposing the concept of the primary stage of socialism
and pointing out that China should gradually change the
current status of underdevelopment to basically realize
socialist modernization, changing from an agricultural country with a majority of rural population and depending highly
on manual labor to an industrialized country with a majority
of non-agricultural population and focusing on modern
agriculture and modern service industries, progressing from
the stage focusing on natural and semi-natural economies to
a historical stage with relatively high degree of economic
marketization.
6.1.4. Sticking to the urbanization path with distinct
characteristics
In November 2002, in Report Delivered to the 16th Party
Congress, Jiang Zemin proposed that to achieve a ourishing rural economy, to accelerate urbanization progress,
and to realize a harmonious urban and rural economic and
social growth, these are important tasks for constructing a
moderately prosperous society in all aspects. It is an
inevitable trend of industrialization and modernization that
surplus agricultural labor will move to non-agricultural
industries and urban areas. We should gradually improve
the urbanization level, stick to the harmonious development of large cities, medium-sized cities, small cities and
towns as well as to the urbanization path with Chinese
distinct characteristics. The development of small cities
shall be based on existing towns and organic towns with
conditions through scientic planning and reasonable
arrangement by integrating the development of township
enterprises and rural service sectors. The institutional and
policy obstacles preventing urbanization progress shall be
removed so as to achieve a reasonable and orderly migration of rural labors to urban areas.
6.1.5. Speeding up the urbanization progress
The Third Plenary Session of the 16th CPC Central Committee held in Beijing in October 2003 proposed to greatly
develop the country economy, to promote urbanization
progress, and to gradually unify urban and rural labor
8
On 12 September 1997, Jiang Zemin delivered report at the 15th
National Congress of the Communist Party of China on 12 September
1997, Hold High the Great Banner of Deng Xiaoping Theory for an
All-round Advancement of the Cause of Building Socialism With
Chinese Characteristics Into the 21st Century.

124
markets.9 The session adopted Decision of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party of China on Some Issues
Concerning the Improvement of the Socialist Market Economy, stressing that the market shall play a fundamental role
in resource allocation so as to provide institutional guarantee for the construction of a moderately prosperous society
in all the elds by integrating the urban and rural development, the regional development, the economic growth and
social development, the harmoniousness of both human
society and nature, and the domestic development and
opening-up. It is also required to construct a system so as to
gradually change current dual urban and rural economic
structure, to create a system promoting a harmonious
regional economic growth, to build a unied and orderly
modern market system, sticking to the principle of making
overall plans and taking all factors into consideration,
centering on people, building a complete, harmonious and
sustainable development concept, promoting economic and
social development.

6.1.6. The 25th CPP Bureau Collective Learning Session

The 25th collective learning session of the Central Party
Political Bureau was held on the afternoon of 29 September
2005, focusing on the topics of foreign urbanization models
and the urbanization paths with distinct Chinese characteristics. Professor Tang Zilai from Tongji University and
Professor Zhou Yixing from Peking University were lecturers.
Hu Jintao chaired the learning session and made an
important speech. He emphasized that China should stick
to the urbanization path with distinct Chinese characteristics and follow the principles of gradual progress, saving
land resources, intensive development and reasonable
planning so as to achieve urbanization which was energyconserving, environment-friendly, economically efcient,
and socially harmonious. Chinese urbanization is an inevitable trend of economic growth and social development and
an important indicator of both industrialization and modernization. China is at a key point for urbanization progress
and we should stick to the harmonious development of large
cities, medium-sized cities, small cities and towns so as to
gradually improve urbanization level, which has great
signicance on improving domestic demand, promoting
national economic growth, optimizing urban and rural
economic structure, promoting a positive cycle of national
economy and harmonious social development. China should
stick to an integrated urban and rural development so as to
continuous promote urbanization on the basis of economic
and social growth, to strengthen urban and rural relationship, to realize optimized allocation of land, labor, capital
and other main production elements in a broader scope, to
move surplus rural labors in an orderly way, to promote
agriculture with industries and countryside with cities in
order to nally achieve common development and prosperity in urban and rural areas. China should improve the
urbanization level, and reinforce the overall strength of
large cities and city agglomeration so as to scientically
allocate various resources and main production elements, to
make cities a leading factor promoting social development
9

The Third Plenary Session of the 16th CPC Central Committee

was held in Beijing during 1114 October 2003.

Chaolin Gu et al.
and economic growth, to improve our economic development level and overall competitiveness.
Hu also pointed out that China is populous, weak in
resources, and imbalanced in development, therefore the
promotion of urbanization faces a lot of problems and
conicts including the large population, the shortage of
resources, the vulnerable environment, and the big diversity in regional development. This means that China must
carry out the scientic development outlook and stick to the
urbanization path with distinct Chinese characteristics:
(1) Stick to the basic state policies of protecting environment and resources, to achieve a harmonious relationship
between urbanization progress and population, resources,
and environment, to intensively use land and water
resources, to protect ecological environment and historical
and cultural environment, to stick to the sustainable and
intensive urbanization path; (2) Take into comprehensive
consideration economic and social development level, market conditions, and social bearing capacity, to bring into full
play of the important function of market in promoting
urbanization, to realize the effective allocation of various
types of resources during the process of urbanization
through market, to gather all types of necessary production
elements in urban areas, to strengthen the macro-control of
government, to reinforce and improve the management,
guidance, and regulation of government on urbanization;
(3) Stick to diverse urbanization paths, to promote a
harmonious development of cities and towns at different
levels, to create a reasonable urban system, to improve the
comprehensive bearing capacity of cities and towns, to
bring into full play of the functions of cities and towns at
different levels in certain region; (4) Reasonably decide on
the goals of urbanization development in different places
according to their respective economic and social development levels, regional features, resource advantages, and
environment, to set up corresponding urbanization strategy
and relevant policies, to strengthen economic connection
among different cities as well as work division and cooperation, to realize supplementary and common development of
different cities and regions; (5) Study and set up policies,
measures, systems, and mechanism in accordance with the
actual conditions and the rules of socialist market-oriented
economy by deepening reforms, and to create a favorable
environment for urbanization progress.

6.1.7. Promoting a healthy urbanization progress

The Fifth Plenary Session of the 16th CPC Central Committee was held in Beijing in October 200510 listened to the
discussed the work report delivered by Hu Jintao with the
Commission of the Communist Party Political Bureau, and
adopted Suggestions of CPC Central Committee on Setting
Up the 11th Five-Year-Plan for National Economic and Social
Development. The plenary session analyzed the international and domestic situations facing economic and social
growth in China, emphasizing that, during the construction
of a moderately prosperous society in all aspects, China
should rmly stick to the outlook of scientic development,
center on people, change the old outlook of development,
10

The Fifth Plenary Session of the 16th CPC Central Committee

was held in Beijing during 811 October 2005.

Progress in research on Chinese urbanization

125

innovate development model, improve development quality, so as to lead the economic and social development onto
the track of sustainable development.
During the 11th Five-Year-Plan period, China should stick
to the principles of realizing a harmonious development of
large, medium-sized, small cities and towns, land resource
conservancy, intensive development, and reasonable planning, so as to promote a healthy urbanization progress.
China should construct and improve corresponding systems
on taxation, land acquisition, administrative management,
and public services in the support of a healthy urbanization
progress, should improve the management on household
registration and oating population. Furthermore, China
should emphasize regional planning, city planning, and land
use planning, to improve human settlement environment,
to protect local characteristics, and to improve urban
management level.

6.2. The National Development and Reform

Commission

6.1.8. Further reinforcing the urbanization path with

distinct characteristics
On the Seventeenth National Congress of the Communist
Party of China held in October 2007, Hu Jintao delivered a
report Hold High the Great Banner of Socialism with
Chinese Characteristics and Strive for New Victories in
Building a Moderately Prosperous Society in all Respect,
pointing out that it is necessary to understand fully the new
situation and tasks in Chinas advance toward an industrialized, information-based, urbanized, market-oriented and
internationalized country, have a good grasp of the new
issues and problems China face in development, follow more
conscientiously the path of scientic development, and strive
to open up a broader vista for developing socialism with
Chinese characteristics. The Report emphasized that in order
to take a path of urbanization with Chinese characteristics,
China will promote balanced development of large, mediumsized and small cities and towns on the principle of balancing
urban and rural development, ensuring rational distribution of
cities, saving land, providing a full range of functions and
getting larger cities to help smaller ones.
Focusing on increasing the overall carrying capacity of
cities, China will form urban clusters with mega-cities as the
core so that they can boost development in other areas and
become new poles of economic growth. China should also
balance urban and rural development and build a new
socialist countryside, should take a path of agricultural
modernization with Chinese characteristics, set up a permanent mechanism of industry promoting agriculture and
urban areas helping rural areas, and form a new pattern
that integrates economic and social development in urban
and rural areas. China will develop rural enterprises,
expand county economies, and transfer rural labor out of
farming through various channels. China will accelerate the
establishment of a social security system covering both
urban and rural residents and guarantee their basic living
conditions. China will promote reform of basic old-age
insurance systems in enterprises, Party and government
organs and public institutions and explore ways to set up
an old-age insurance system in rural areas. China will
improve the low-rent housing system and speed up resolution of the housing difculties of low-income families in
urban areas.

6.2.2. Carrying out urbanization strategy to realize a

harmonious urban and rural development
The 10th Five-Year-Plan listed urbanization as the key
construction item, during the compilation of the 10th FiveYear-Plan, the State Ministry of Construction made previous
studies on the urbanization development trend and solutions
with the market-oriented economic conditions, proposing
the basic outlooks for urbanization and urban development
planning. The 4th Plenary Session of the 9th National Peoples
Congress Council held on 15 March 2001 adopted the TenthFive-Year Plan of the Peoples Republic of China on National
Economy and Social Development, listing urbanization as an
important content of national economic and social growth
plans for the rst time: to carry out urbanization strategy and
to promote harmonious urban and rural development. According to the Tenth-Five-Year Plan of the Peoples Republic of
China on National Economy and Social Development, to
improve urbanization level and to transfer rural population
will help farmers to increase income and improve livelihood,
will provide for economic growth more extensive markets and
a longer lasting driving force, which make it an important
measure promoting a positive cycle of national economy and
a harmonious social development.
Along with the improvement of rural productivity and the
acceleration of industrialization, the conditions for promoting urbanization progress have been mature; China should
take the chance to carry out an urbanization strategy. The
promotion of urbanization shall follow objective rules, be
based on actual economic growth and market development
degree and progress gradually by taking the diverse urbanization paths to achieve a harmonious development of large,
medium-sized, and small cities and towns, so as to gradually
construct a reasonable urban system. China will emphasize
the development of towns, actively development mediumsized and small cities, improve the functions of regional
central cities, bring into full play of the inuence of large
cities, and guide the orderly development of urban agglomerations. China should guard against the tendency of blindly
expanding urban areas and urban size.
To develop towns is an important way to promote Chinese
urbanization progress. The Tenth-Five-Year Plan of the
Peoples Republic of China on National Economy and Social
Development also proposed to remove the institutional and

6.2.1. Developing small cities and towns by actively

encouraging an orderly migration of surplus rural labors
On 5 March 1996, the 4th Plenary Session of the 8th National
Peoples Congress Council adopted the Ninth-Five-Year Plan
of the Peoples Republic of China on National Economy and
Social Development and Outlines of Objectives in Perspective of the Year 2010 and started to include the content of
urbanization in national economic and social development
plans: in order to achieve a favorable investment environment and to improve economic efciency, the development
of rural enterprises will be relatively concentrated and will
be integrated with the construction of small cities and
towns together with the active guidance on transferring
surplus rural labors in an orderly way.

126
policy obstacles for Chinese urbanization, to break the dual
urban and rural system, and to gradually build a new urban
and rural relationship with the market-oriented economic
system. China will reform the urban household registration
system so as to achieve a system for an orderly mobility of
both urban and rural population. China will remove the
unreasonable restrictions preventing rural laborers from
working in urban areas so as to guide an orderly migration
of surplus rural laborers between urban and rural areas and
among different regions. China will reform and improve
urban land-use system and make adjustments to the landuse structure so as to make full use of land inventory and to
have a better solution on urban construction land by
developing nancing channels and constructing a new
investment and nancing system for urban construction to
nally realize a diverse pattern with multiple investing
bodies. With the guidance of the government, China will
exert the functions of market mechanism in constructing
towns and encouraging both enterprises and urban and rural
people to invest. China will set up standards for constructing cities and towns, and will construct the administrative
management system in accordance with market-oriented
economic systems and the requirements of urbanization.
China will further promote the coordination of policies and
improve the macro management on urbanization.

6.2.3. Promoting actively the healthy development of

urbanization
According to the Eleventh-Five-Year Plan of the Peoples
Republic of China on National Economy and Social Development adopted in March 2006, China will promote the healthy
urbanization progress by balancing the development of large,
medium-sized, and small cities and towns, improving the
comprehensive bearing capacity of urban areas, and sticking
to the principle of land conservancy, intensive development,
and reasonable planning so as to actively and steadily promote
the urbanization progress and to gradually change the dual
urban and rural structure. China will take urban agglomeration
as the main form of promoting urbanization to gradually
achieve a harmonious and sustainable urbanization spatial
structure with high efciency with coastal areas and BeijingGuangzhou and Beijing-Harbin railway lines as vertical axes,
with the Yangtze River and Lianyungang-Lanzhou railway lines
as horizontal axes, focusing on several leading urban agglomerations, with other scattered cities and towns and permanent
farming land separating from ecological functioning areas.
The existing city agglomeration areas in Beijing-TianjinHebei, the Yangtze River Delta Area, and the Pearl River
Delta Area shall continuously exert their inuence on
surrounding areas, the division of urban functions, cooperating, and supplementation of advantages among different
cities in urban agglomerations shall be further reinforced so
as to promote the comprehensive competitiveness of these
areas. The areas with conditions to develop urban agglomeration shall reinforce consolidation and planning, focusing
on mega-cities and large cities, exerting the functions of
central cities, so as to build new urban agglomerations using
a small amount of land resources, creating more job
positions, gathering main production elements and with a
reasonable population distribution. As for the areas with
scattered population distribution and unsatisfactory

Chaolin Gu et al.
resource conditions and without conditions to develop urban
agglomeration, the focus shall be put on developing existing
cities, towns, and organic towns with required conditions,
so as to make them regional centers gathering economies,
population and public services. China will speed up in
removing institutional obstacles preventing urban and rural
integration, construct and improve systems on taxation, land
acquisition, administrative management and public services
for the realization of a healthy urbanization. China will
further improve administrative division and management
models, reform on the employment management system
segmentation urban and rural areas, deepen the reforms on
the household registration system, and gradually construct a
consolidated urban and rural population registration system.

6.3. The State Ministry of Housing and

Construction
After Peoples Republic of China was founded in 1949, the
state administration on urban construction was the Division
of Basic Construction in Planning Bureau of Committee of
Financial Affairs, Administration of Political Affairs. In
August 1952, the central government founded the State
Ministry of Construction Engineering in charge of construction projects and urban construction (Zhao, 1999). Later,
the Ministry of Construction Engineering was changed into
the Ministry of Urban Construction, the State Ministry of
Construction, the State Ministry of Urban and Rural Construction and Environment Protection, and the State Ministry of Housing and Construction; these are administrations
directly in charge of urbanization progress in China.
6.3.1. Law of City Planning and guidelines for urban
development
The State Ministry of Construction organized the studies on
urbanization path in China in the early 1980s and in October
1980, the State Capital Construction Commission held a work
meeting on national city planning in Beijing, announcing clear
guiding opinions on the status and function of city planning, the
guidelines on urban development, as well as the compilation,
approval, and implementation of city planning. The meeting
also discussed the draft of the Law of the Peoples Republic
of China on City Planning. The State Council promulgated on
5 January 1984 the revised edition of the draft for implementation as administrative regulation, during which several more
revisions were made according to the actual requirements of
the situation. On 26 December 1989, the NPC Standing
Committee adopted the rst law on city planning in China,
Law of Peoples Republic of China on City Planning, clearly
pointing out the principles of strictly controlling the size of
large cities,11 reasonably developing medium-sized cities12 and
small cities13 so as to achieve a reasonable pattern of
productivity and population distribution.
11

Big cities refer to those with a non-agricultural population of

more than 500,000 in urban and suburban areas.
12
Middle cities refer to those with a non-agricutlural population
of more than 200,000 but no more than 500,000 in urban and
suburban areas.
13
Small cities refer to those with a non-agricutlural population of
no more than 200,000 in urban and suburban areas.

Progress in research on Chinese urbanization

6.3.2. Seminar on Chinese urbanization path and on
urban development strategies
In 1982, the City Planning Division of the Ministry of Urban
and Rural Construction and Environmental Protection held
four seminars on the issues of Chinese urbanization paths
in different cities including Nanjing. In December 1982, the
Chinese Society for Philosophy of Nature, Science and
Technology held the rst session of Seminar on Urban
Development Strategy with the help of the Ministry of Urban
and Rural Construction and Environmental Protection,
extending the studies of Chinese urbanization to both elds
of natural sciences and human sciences.
6.3.3. Regional urban system and planning of urban
distribution
The reforms on the urban economic system starting in the
1980s managed to break the segmented and close urban
economic management system formed during a long period
of time in the past, to fully exert the functions of cities as
centers, to greatly develop horizontal economic relations,
and to gradually create economic areas centering on cities
with different types of networks. Along with the introduction of the system of promoting counties with cities, the
new urban and rural relations have been gradually established by promoting rural areas with urban areas, integrating urban and rural areas, and achieving a harmonious
development. With this situation, the State Ministry of
Construction launched city planning extensively in the
entire country, encouraging the studies on urban development and pattern from regional perspective.14 In 1984, in
order to meet the needs of compiling Outline of State
Territorial Plan by State Planning Committee, the City
Planning Bureau of the State Ministry of Construction
started to organize the compilation of Outline of Planning
of Urban Distribution in China. In October 1985, the State
Planning of Urban Distribution 2000 was compiled and
included in the Outline of State Territorial Plan with the
approval of the State Planning Committee. It was then
distributed to all provinces for urban system planning
and revising overall city planning. In early 1986, City
Planning Bureau of the State Ministry of Construction
organized the compilation of the Planning of Urban
Distribution along the Yangtze River. In December 1990,
the City Planning Division of the State Ministry of Construction and the Territorial Planning Division of State
Planning Committee jointly compiled the Planning of Urban
Distribution along Lianyungang-Lanzhou and LanzhouXinjiang Railway Lines, and nished this plan in 1992
(Zhao, 1999).
6.3.4. Urban development strategies in China in the
new Century
In 1994, the 14th National Congress of the Communist Party
established the general framework of socialist market-oriented
economic system. In order to promote the studies on
14

Urban system planning was rstly introduced in Yantai City.

During March to August 1984, City and Region Planning Division of
Nanjing University joined hands with Yantai Municiple Planning and
Designing Division in compiling A Study on the Urban System
Planning in Yantai (Condential), Song Jiatai is the leader of the
project team.

127
urbanization, urban development rules and mechanism with
socialist market-oriented economic system, to guide a reasonable and orderly urbanization progress, the State Ministry of
Construction listed the studies on urban development strategy
in the new century as the key research topics during the 8th
Five-Year-Plan Period.15 The project studies Chinese urban
development strategies to embrace the information economy
era, and also the urban development strategies in accordance
with the reforms on socialist economic system. As the fundamental research for the compilation of new national urban
system planning, the purpose of the research project is to study
a series of theoretical and actual problems facing urbanization
and urban development in China during the new Century, the
main issues include: (1) To study the development trend of the
world urban system, the tendency of economic globalization,
and achievements obtained after China adopted reform and
opening-up policies, and then the urban system in China under
the background of the world urban system, exploring possible
urban patterns formed under new international economic
system and the new development trend of metropolises;
(2) To analyze the experience and lessons on urban development in some developed countries, to explore the possible
problems during the transition of economic system in China,
including urbanization and suburbanization, and the types of
cities (international metropolitan, urban agglomeration, and
metropolitan areas), proposing appropriate new strategies
of urban development in China; (3) To study the rules of
urban system evolution in developed countries, to compare
and analyze different social and economic conditions, to
explore the internal mechanism and rules of Chinese urban
system development under the economic globalization,
information society, and new economic system, so as to
provide new theoretical framework for the compilation of
state middle-and long-tern urban system planning and overall city planning.
6.3.5. Comparative analysis of Chinese urbanization
and other countries
In 1997, the State Ministry of Construction organized the
comparative analysis on Chinese urbanization and the other
countries, exploring the necessity and urgency of Chinese
urbanization on the basis of actual conditions in China and the
international experience of urbanization, proposing suggestions on the policies of promoting Chinese urbanization.
6.3.6. Seminar on urbanization and urban development
strategy in China
In February 1998, the State Ministry of Construction organized
a Seminar on Urbanization and Urban Development Strategy in
China, and the participants includedthe leaders and experts
from State Planning Committee, the Research Ofce of the
State Council, the State Ministry of Civil Affairs, the Ministry of
Public Security, the Environment Protection Bureau, and other
departments of the State Council as well as CAS, China
Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing City Planning Bureau,
15

The research project was undertaken by Geography Institute of

Chinese Academy of Sciences and the research report was jointly
compiled by Gu Chaolin, Cai Jianming, Sun Ying, Niu Yafei, Fan
Guangbing, Zhang Qin, Zhu Junfeng, and Tian Wenzhu. The research
results have been extensively adopted and applied in following
studies on urbanization.

128
City Planning Institute, and Tsinghua University. The seminar
was chaired by Zhao Baojiang, State Planning Committee
Deputy Director Guo Shuyan participated in the seminar, and
Yu Zhengsheng delivered keynote speech. All the participants
agreed that urbanization is an inevitable trend of social and
economic growth, and that a reasonable and orderly urbanization will actively promote the healthy and sustainable economic and social development in China, will help to solve the
structural conicts formed during the long period of time.
Currently, China is experiencing rapid urbanization progress,
and one of the key issues is how to actively prepare for the
peak time of urbanization and to reasonably guide and control
the urbanization progress in China. Yu Zhengsheng nally
emphasized that urbanization is one of the top three issues
that the State Ministry of Construction explored. Urbanization
will have profound impact on the long-term development of
China, which makes it an issue as important as the issues of
water, agriculture, and land.
6.3.7. The compilation of National Urban System
Planning
In May 2005, in order to carry out the order of the central
government to reinforce and improve macro control, the
State Ministry of Construction founded the planning compilation team and special project team with Wang Guangtao
serving as the team leader, starting the compilation of
National Urban System Planning according to the organization principles of being organized by the government,
emphasizing cooperation among different authorities and
departments, leading with experts, being engaged by the
public.16 On the basis of studies on ten issues of urbanization and urban development including population, resource
and environment conditions, and industrial and urban
spatial development, the project team studied carefully
the provincial urban system plans as well as overall planning
of municipalities directly under the Central Government
approved by the State Council, and the special planning on
highway, railroad, and civil aviation, listened to the opinions of experts in different elds plus city planning
administrations from 31 provinces (autonomous regions
and municipalities) directly under the Central Government,
sought written opinions of the joint conference of city
planning administrations, and nally nished in September
2005 Outline on National Urban System Planning (2006
2020). After October 2005, according to the requirement
proposed by Hu Jintao during the 25th Political Bureau
Learning Session held on 29 September 2005 on accelerating
the compilation of national urban system planning, the
State Ministry of Construction revised, enriched, and
improved the content of Outline on National Urban System
16
Since the adoption of Law on City Planning in 1990, the State
Ministry of Construction initiated a series of basic research projects
including A Study on Urban Development Strategy in China at the
Turn of the Century, A Comparative Analysis on Cities and
Urbanization in China and Foreign Countries. It also organized
provinces (autonomous regions) to set up provincial urban system
planning, and cooperated with Guangdong Provincial Party Committee and Provincial Government in compiling Harmonious Development Planning of City Agglomeration in the Pearl River Delta Area
(20042020), laying a solid foundation of both theories and practice
for the setup of National Urban System Planning.

Chaolin Gu et al.
Planning on the basis of the 11th Five-Year-Plan on National
Economic and Social Development. National Urban System
Planning was nally nished in August 2006.

6.4.

The State Ministry of Civil Affairs

6.4.1. Forcast and Planning Designated Cities in China

In early 1989, the Administrative Division and Naming
Division of the State Ministry of Civil Affairs started to
compile Forecast and Planning Designated Cities in China
and produced Scheme on Forecast and Planning Designated
Cities based on extensive investigation and studies before
launching pilot projects in Shandong Province.
6.4.2. Policies for Designated City Planning
According to the provincial planning and newly promulgated
standards for constructing new cities, the State Ministry of
Civil Affairs ordered the Forecast and Planning Designated
Cities research team to decide on the framework and
outline of the Forecast and Planning Designated Cities
before collecting, ling, and analyzing relevant materials,
tables, and graphics.17 The Forecast and Planning Designated Cities was nished in February 1995. On 19 May 1995,
the State Ministry of Civil Affairs organized minister meeting
to discuss the Forecast and Planning Designated Cities and
conrmed on the research results. On 27 June 1995, the
Forecast and Planning Designated Cities obtained the
approval of the appraisal committee composed of leading
domestic experts. On 2 July 1996, the State Ministry of Civil
Affairs proposed the Forecast and Planning Designated
Cities to the State Council, suggesting to make it an
important foundation for setting up new cities in China
and to make it a reference during the process of approval.
The leaders of the State Council highly praised the Forecast
and Planning Designated Cities, taking it as an important
research fruit for compiling predicting and planning city
setting up by the State Ministry of Civil Affairs with
important signicance for planning social and economic
development, and therefore gave it consent to take it as
the reference for setting up new cities in future.

6.5. The State Ministry of Science and Technology

and National Foundations
6.5.1. Studies on urban development and urbanization
technologies
The rapid Chinese urbanization also served as the engine
for national economic growth. In December 2005, the State
Council published Planning Outline for Middle- and LongTerm Science and Technology Development (20062020),
listing the research on urban development and urbanization
technologies as the 11th topic. The project makes the
construction of predicting and monitoring information system on Chinese urbanization as one of the goals of urban
development and urbanization technological development
in the next 15 years so as to provide technological foundation
17

This research project is undertaken by the Geography Institute

of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the research report is jointly
compiled by Hu Xuwei, Pu Shanxin, Ma Qingyu, Gu Chaolin, Cai
Jianming, and Tian Wenzhu.

Progress in research on Chinese urbanization

for the harmonious process of population re-distribution,
economic and social growth, and urbanization progress. It is
required to construct an urbanization predicting and monitoring platform with new technologies including GIS, to construct
urban and rural space identication and monitoring system in
typical areas, to study the rules and model of urbanization
with distinct Chinese characteristics on the basis of the
continuous and rapid urbanization progress in China, to study
the development strategy and policies on both megalopolis
and towns, as well as the urban and rural integration system,
policies, and management during Chinese urbanization.
6.5.2. Key projects sponsored by the National
Foundation on Philosophy and Social Sciences
The committee of National Foundation on Philosophy and
Social Sciences sponsored the key research project of
Investigation on Urban Population Movement in 74 Chinese
Cities during the 7th Five-Year-Plan Period. Population
Institute CASS cooperated with 16 provinces and municipalities directly under the Central Government in launching
the investigation. The researchers summarize the main
features of the urban population moving during Chinese
urbanization progress: (1) the urban population movement
uctuated during Chinese urbanization process; (2) rural
population move in a large amount to urban areas;
(3) mechanism of the urban population movement is subject
to proportioned plans and administrative management;
(4) the restriction on urban and rural population movement
originated from the closed economic elements.
6.5.3. Key projects sponsored by National Natural
Science Foundation
The Department of Geosciences of National Natural Science
Foundation of China started from the actual needs of the
country and the disciplinary development and actively promoted the studies on Chinese urbanization, so that the research
on urbanization and urban system continuously progresses.
According to the statistics released during 21 years since
1987, a total of 17 researches on urbanization were sponsored
by the National Natural Science Foundation (Table 1). Since
1990, Zhou Yixing has been in charge of 5 research projects
(including two key projects). In 2004, Gu Chaolin was in charge
of the key research project of Pattern, Process and Mechanism of Urbanization in China (40435013), which concluded
that the theories on urbanization in the Third World in the west
are based on the dependency theory framework, whose frameworks are not in conformity with the actual situation in China
and with research on Chinese urbanization, while the theories
on urbanization under the socialist planned economy is outdated and no longer practical. The focus of the research
includes: (1) the theoretical framework on Chinese urbanization; (2) the spatial pattern, development process, and
dynamic mechanism of regional urban system; (3) the impact
of globalization on Chinese urbanization progress.
The goals of the research are: (1) to construct an ideal
theoretical framework for the studies on Chinese urbanization,
to explore the expression with mathematical model system
(possibly system dynamic model), to progress in theories on
urbanization and quantitative analysis, especially the urbanization progress and mechanism; (2) to predict on the ideal
status of Chinese urbanization during 20102050 on the basis of

129
restrictive function cluster; (3) to apply geographical information system to make video expression on the above-mentioned
ideal status from four levels of country, greater region, urban
agglomeration, and mega-city. These research projects greatly
promoted the studies on urbanization and urban system
theories in China and have obtained many important academic
results both domestically and internationally.

6.6. International cooperation and important

conferences on Chinese urbanization
6.6.1. Four academic seminars on Chinese
urbanization paths
(1) The rst seminar on urbanization path in China was held
in 1980 in Hangzhou during the meeting announcing the
founding Division of Regional Planning and Urban Economics of China City Planning Committee of China
Architecture Association, the issue of Chinese urbanization paths was listed as the rst discussion topic during
the session, discussing how to organize and promote the
studies on urbanization issues in China (Hu, 2007).
(2) The second seminar on Chinese urbanization paths
was held during 6-10 December 1982 in Nanjing. The
participants include more than 60 experts, and professionals from the Ministry of Urban and Rural Construction and Environmental Protection, the policy maker of
the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, institutes, universities and colleges, as well as government
and administrations in 18 provinces and municipalities,
handing in a total of nearly 70 articles (including ve
research books). The participants exchanged academic
ideas on urbanization, claried some basic concepts,
had a better understanding on some issues of Chinese
urbanization, and basically decided on the direction of
future studies on Chinese urbanization.18 As for the
concept and standard of urbanization, most participants
agreed that there were two different translation versions of Chengzhenhua
and Chengshihua
) on the same term urbanization, that urban
(
and rural are antonyms and urban areas refer to both
cities and towns.
Urbanization is a process of population transferring from
rural areas to urban residential areas of different types.
Urban areas refer extensively to cities and towns, and in
most cases, cities also include towns and there are a
large amount of towns, making the Chinese translation
version of Chengzhenhua
more accurate
than Chengshihua (
). During the seminar, most
participants believed that urbanization refers to the
process of rural population changing into urban population, and agricultural population changing into nonagricultural population. But, urbanization is a result of
social, political, economic, cultural, and technological
18

Synopsis of minutes is compiled on the basis of the speeches

delivered by Professor Song Jiatai, leader of Regional Planning and
Urban Economic Research Team, Zhou Ganzhi, leader of the
Institute of City Planning and Designing, and Hu Xuwei from
Geography Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences, as well as
on the speeches made by other participants and relevant theses.

130

Chaolin Gu et al.

Table 1 Research projects on urbanization sponsored by the Department of Geosciences, National Natural Science
Foundation of China (19872007).
Project No.

Researcher

Working unit

Project name

48770020

Wang
Qiming
Hu
Zhaoliang
Wang
Qiming

Nanjing Normal
University
Peking University

Studies on Rural Human Settlements Types in

South Jiangsu Province and on Rural Urbanization
A Comparative Study on Urbanization and Urban
Development Rules
A Comparative Study on Rural Urbanization in
Yangtze River Delta Area and Pearl River Delta
Area
On the Spatial Heterogeneity of the Urbanization
in Taihu Drainage Area on Taking up Natural
Capital
Urbanization in Ecological Tourism Areas and
Natural Reserve Areas
Studies on Urbanization Process and Mechanism in
Ecologically Vulnerable West Areas
Studies on Urbanization Measurement and Time
and Spatial Evolution Based on Data Mining
Studies on the Features of Geographical System
Development during Material Urbanization in
Large Cities of Northeast China
Evaluation on Multi-Functional Protection Value of
Farming Land in Areas with Rapid Urbanization
Progress and Calculation of Efciency
Spatial Evolution Types and Dynamic Mechanism of
Semi-Urbanization Areas in China

48770022
49171030

Nanjing Normal
University

40171042

Hu Dan

40271032

Li Wenjun

CAS Research Center for

Eco-Environmental
Sciences
Peking University

40271043

Gu Chaolin

Nanjing University

40371038

Xu Jiangang

Nanjing University

40371040

Yuan
Jiadong

Northeast Normal
University

40471055

Liu Weidong

Zhejiang University

40571056

Liu Shenghe

40571060

Tian
Guangjin
Yang
Qingshan

CAS Institute of
Geographical Sciences
and Natural Resources
Research
Beijing Normal
University
Northeast Normal
University

40671047

40671062

Dong
Suocheng

CAS Institute of
Geographical Sciences
and Natural Resources
Research
CAS Institute of
Geographical Sciences
and Natural Resources
Research
CAS Institute of
Geographical Sciences
and Natural Resources
Research
Guizhou Academy of
Sciences

40101010

Liu Shenghe

40401016

Yang
Xiaoguang

40261002

Su Weici

40561003

Li Baisui

Inner Mongolia Normal

University

49331010

Hu Xuwei

CAS Institute of
Geographical Sciences
and Natural Resources
Research

Time and Spatial Models, Driving Mechanism, and

Environment Response of Urbanization in China
Studies on Mutual Feedback Mechanism of Social
Changes and Urbanization Evolution in both Time
and Space in Northeast China since 1860
Studies on the Effect of Ecological Environment on
the Urbanization of Oasis Areas along Shiyang
River and Corresponding Control Measures: A Case
Study of Liangzhou District, Wuwei City
Changes of Land Use and Spatial Reorganization in
Areas with Semi-Urbanization: A Case Study of
Shaoxing City in Zhejiang Province

Fund
(10,000
yuan)
1.2
1.5
4.5

29
10
10
28

29

35

30
33

27

21

Studies on Location Changes of Rural Industrial

Enterprises in China and on its Relationship with
Urbanization

25

Studies on the Process, Model, and Environment

Effect of Rural Urbanization in Karst Areas in
Guizhou
Studies on Industrial Structure Evolution in
Agricultural-Husbandry Areas and Its Interaction
with Urbanization
Studies on Mechanism and Control of Economy and
Population Centralization and Decentralization in
Coastal City Agglomeration Areas

15

22

74

Progress in research on Chinese urbanization

131

Table 1 (continued )
Project No.

Researcher

Working unit

Project name

Fund
(10,000
yuan)

49831030

Xu Xueqiang

Sun Yat-sen University

110

90102013

Dong
Suocheng

40335051

Zhou Yixing

CAS Institute of
Geographical Sciences
and Natural Resources
Research
Peking University

Studies on the Harmonious Development of Hong

Kong, Macau, the Pearl River Delta Area and
Surrounding Areas
Interaction between Urbanization and
Environment in Northwest China during Last 50
Years

40435013

Gu Chaolin

Nanjing University

40535026

Zhang Lei

CAS Institute of
Geographical Sciences
and Natural Resources
Research

Spatial Dynamics on the Evolution and SelfOrganizing of Chinese Cities

Studies on Model, Process, and Mechanism of
Urbanization in China
Studies on Resources and Environment during
Urbanization Progress in China

80

90
130
135

Note: the statistics were released by Department of Geosciences of the National Natural Science Foundation of China on the research
projects with the term urbanization in topics or as key word.

processes, and an extremely complicated dynamic process as well. It is therefore inadequate to measure
Chinese urbanization process and level by the changes
and growth of urban population proportion. Most participants held that the issue can be analyzed with multiple indices on a comprehensive basis. In the past, as for
the statistics on urban population in China, it means the
non-agricultural population in the cities and towns,
making the nal results relatively low and unreasonable.
During the 1982 census, urban population included all
people in cities and towns, which made the data more
practical and closer to the actual situation than before.
But since some industrial and mining areas and towns
are scattered in location, many towns are constructed
on the basis of counties, and the suburban areas of
mountainous urban areas are relatively big with a small
proportion of non-agricultural population, and the
entire population is calculated as urban population. In
addition, there are a large amount of farmer workers in
urban areas, who are actually urban population registered as rural population, whether they should be
included into urban population.
The trend of urbanization progress is another important
issue. The construction of socialist modernization in all
aspects will greatly promote the urbanization progress
in China. Firstly, agricultural development has laid a
solid material foundation for Chinese urbanization and
requires more rapid urbanization progress. Secondly,
along with the great development of energy industries,
a large amount of coal production bases, oil elds,
large-, medium-, and small-scale waterpower and thermal power stations, which means in the one hand, the
original industrial and mining cities will further development, on the other hand, a lot of new industrial and
mining cities and towns will be constructed. Thirdly, the
priority on trafc and transport industry is fundamental
to urban development. The construction of railway, port

and other transport facilities will also greatly promote

the Chinese urbanization progress. Fourthly, during the
process of constructing four modernizations, China will
greatly promote intellectual development so as to
develop culture, education, research, and the tertiary
industry, for these are also important factors promoting
Chinese urbanization.
At the same time, urbanization is an objective historical
process occurring at the same time as economic growth.
The urbanization level in a country is in logarithm
correlation with its economic development level. In
2000, the gross output value of industry and agriculture
in China doubled, making China a moderately prosperous country in the world and the proportion of urban
population is no less than 30%. To sum up, Chinese
urbanization is an inevitable trend of, and objective
requirement by, the realization of four modernizations,
and most participants believed that the opinion urbanization is not the path for urban and rural development
in China was not correct.
The Chinese urbanization paths are another important
issue. China is a developing socialist country and must
stick to a socialist urbanization path with distinct
Chinese characteristics. While at the same time, the
natural conditions in different places differ greatly, with
different population and nationality composition and
imbalanced economic growth, therefore, different
places shall choose different urbanization paths with
distinct local characteristics. The National Urban Construction Working Meeting held in 1980 summarized the
good and bad experiences on urban construction since
1949, proposing the principles of controlling the size of
the large cities, reasonably developing medium-sized
cities, and actively developing small cities. Most
participants believed that the principles of urban
development are in accordance with the actual conditions in China. Since the overall level of productivity

132
development is relatively low and differs greatly in
different places, for a relatively long period of time,
many economic forms will exist side by side.
As for agricultural population changing into non-agricultural population, the leading way of realizing that is to
keep them where they are by depending on the collective system and various types of cooperation so as to
actively develop small cities and towns, especially a
large amount of rural markets. But some participants
proposed that the terms such as control and reasonable development were ambiguous in meaning. The
session nally concluded that the Chinese urbanization
is a big issue facing the entire world and to study
Chinese urbanization has great theoretical and practical
signicance. In general, China is lack in both experience
and studies in the urbanization eld; while at the same
time, urbanization is an extremely issue and its impossible to solve all the problems and to clarify all the
issues by holding one or two academic seminars. China
should unite together and join hands in studying these
issues so as to make the research on urbanization
fruitful.
(3) The third seminar on Chinese urbanization paths was
held in October 1984 and jointly organized by China City
Planning Academic Committee and China Association of
Urban Sciences in Yueyang City, focusing on the issues of
small city and town development. The Division of
Regional Planning and Urban Economics also explored
the direction of studies on Chinese urbanization and key
issues in the eld through internal exchanges and
communications (Hu, 2007).
(4) The fourth seminar on Chinese urbanization paths was
held in November 1986 in Shijiazhuang and organized by
Division of Regional Planning and Urban Economics,
China City Planning Association, focusing on urban system
planning (Hu, 2007).
6.6.2. Second session of International seminar on Asian
Urbanization
The Second session of International seminar on Asian
Urbanization was held in August 1988 in Nanjing, the
participants include the experts on urbanization from US,
UK, and leading countries in Asia. Chinese scholars introduced the results and progress of studies on urbanization
during the last decade.
6.6.3. Studies on population, employment and
urbanization
During 19891992, the Research and Development Center of
the State Council cooperated with the Development Division
of World Bank to launch the research project on population
employment and Chinese urbanization, covering such issues
as the problems of development and innovation of large
cities in China during the process of industrialization, and
the problems of regional urbanization during the process of
industrialization in China.
6.6.4. Comparative Study on Urbanization from Bottom
to Top
During 19941996, Nanjing University, Sun Yat-sen University
in China joined hands with US University of Akron, The

Chaolin Gu et al.
University of Georgia, and University of Washington in
launching the Sino-US research project, A Comparative
Study on Urbanization in China from Bottom to Top
sponsored by Henry Luce Foundation and the Chinese
urbanization research team.

6.6.5. World Bank Senior Seminar on Chinese

Urbanization
On 23 July 1999, World Bank held in Beijing a Senior seminar
on Chinese Urbanization. The participants include such
Chinese governmental ofcials as Deputy Minister Zhao
Baojing from the State Ministry of Construction, Deputy
Minister Lou Jiwei from the Ministry of Finance, Deputy
Director Shao Bingren from System Reform Ofce of the
State Council, and Chief Zhu Baozhi from Planning Division
of National Development and Planning Committee. The
theme of the seminar was the impact of urbanization on
economic growth in China as well as corresponding measures. Most participants believed that urbanization is an
inevitable trend of economic and social development in
China, that to actively adopt urbanization policies, to speed
up urbanization progress, to increase the investment on
urban infrastructure construction, these will promote
domestic demand and economic growth in a short term,
and will also serve as an effective way to make adjustment
to middle- and long-term basic economic structure, which
will have great impact on the sustainable, rapid and healthy
economic and social growth in China. Nobel economics
award winner and senior vice president and chief economist
of the World Bank J. E. Stiglitz listed the Chinese urbanization as one of the two key elements affecting the human
development progress during the 21st Century beside high
technology in US. According to the Economic Evaluation on
Urban Development in China published by World Bank, in
the next two decades and in terms of the continuous
development of China, urban development will become
one of the most important policy issues. It also pointed
out that China should promote the growth of economic
efciency and growth as well as economic equality through
urbanization.
In his speech, Lou Jiwei held that, in order to realize a
rapid and healthy urbanization progress, China must set up
effective policies promoting urbanization development on
the basis of re-evaluating existing policies. He also emphasized that the current policies and regulations restricting
urban land use prevented the healthy development of
urbanization, that the researchers should study the feasibility of developing nancing channels for urban construction by issuing urban construction bonds by local
governments. Zhu Baozhi proposed in his speech to take
urbanization progress as a main content of the 10th FiveYear-Plan, to compile national urban system planning, and
to make adjustment to overall national land use plans
according to the actual demand of urbanization proceess.
Zhao Baojiang emphasized in his speech that the policies
on Chinese urbanization must be based on the actual
situation in China and must meet the requirements of
constructing socialist market-oriented economic system. In
order to ensure an orderly development of urbanization, it
is necessary to compile scientically and to implement
strictly city planning, and China shall further increase the

Progress in research on Chinese urbanization

investment on urban infrastructure and social facilities,
shall deepen the reforms on public enterprise and government-owned enterprise, and shall build a regular investment and nancing system for urban construction on the
basis of market-oriented economic operation system.
6.6.6. World Bank Research Project: Policies of Chinese
urbanization19
The World Bank started to study the Chinese urbanization on
a systematic basis in 1999, with the initial purpose of
providing investment support as well as technological and
intellectual help for the overall development in China.
Accordingly, in order to be in accordance with the demand
on urbanization during the 10th Five-Year-Plan period, from
1999-2003, the World Bank launched a complete study on
the policies of Chinese urbanization with the help of leading
scholars from twelve universities including Stanford University, Brown University, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin, London School of Economics, Universite
Paris 12, University of Tokyo, China Academy of Sciences,
China Academy of Social Sciences, and Peking University. On
the basis of international experience and through case
studies on Zhejiang, Henan, and Sichuan Province, they
intended to provide advice on urbanization progress in
China in extensive elds of household registration system,
land, infrastructure, investment and nancing system, and
urban development strategy.
With the deepening of the research and in order to meet
the needs of Great West Development Project and Reviving
Northeast China Project, the World Bank organized a more
extensive study during 20022005 on lagging regions and
small town development as well as the investment environment of Northeast China, the case studies covered extensive areas of Sichuan, Chongqing, Yunnan, Guizhou, Gansu,
Henan, Zhejiang, and provinces in Northeast China. Later
on, on the request of National Development and Reform
Commission and State Ministry of Finance, and in order
to meet the requirements of development during the
11th Five-Year-Plan Period, during 2003-2007, the World
Bank organized researches on special issues of urban development strategies in several regions and cities and metropolitan governance, covering such cities as Chongqing,
Chengdu, Guiyang, Zhengzhou, Xinxiang, Erdos, Tianjin,
Hangzhou, Changsha, Zhuzhou, Xiangtan, Harbin, Dalian,
and Qiqihaer. Recently, in order to further deepen the
development strategies proposed for the 11th Five-YearPlan Period and to prepare for the improvement of urbanization quality during the 12th Five-Year-Plan Period, from
2006, the World Bank focused on Tianjin and Zhengzhou
to study the urban land use efciency in China as well
as focused on Ningbo to study the construction of new
countryside.
6.6.7. International Seminar on Chinese Urbanization
Strategies
The National Development and Reform Commission, the
State Ministry of Finance, and the World Bank jointly held
an International seminar on Chinese Urbanization Strategies
19

Cai Jianming, On Development and Dynamics of the World Bank

in Studies of Urbanization in China, 3 March 2008.

133
during 79 May 2000 in Beijing. In order to solve the problem
of rapid industrialization and slow urbanization in China, as
well as the management problems in both policies and
systems caused by the long-term neglecting of the studies
on urbanization, the seminar focused on the issues such as
how to cope with the important policies made for the 10th
Five-Year-Plan Period and how to manage urbanization
progress. Most participants agreed that the lagging Chinese
urbanization was not in accordance with its economic growth,
and the main reason is that the government controls migration
and provides extremely limited urban services to oating
population and their families. One of the indicators of a
lagging urbanization is the continuous widening of the income
gap between urban and rural population. They analyzed the
factors preventing urbanization progress in China, believing
that the obstacles preventing mobility of population and
company must be removed. The participants held that the
existing household registration system greatly restricted the
population movement and therefore affected the ow of main
elements, which in fact resulted in the scattering of labor
markets.
The seminar concluded that one of the top challenges
facing China is how to satisfy the demand for a large amount
of investment in urban infrastructure and services for
next decade. Most participants suggested that, apart from
current urban maintenance and construction tax, the
government shall develop and apply more taxes and
charges, including use fees, property tax, property rent,
and local government loan, transfer payment among governments, and infrastructure and urban service market
fees. Furthermore, the seminar paid special attention to
the areas with semi-urbanization, especially the areas
surrounding large cities, which have been the most active
places in industrialization and urbanization during last two
decades. The participants reviewed the past experience of
taking urban size as the foundation for making urban
policies, that is, the policies of strictly controlling the
growth of large cities, reasonably development mediumsized cities, and actively developing small cities and towns.
The seminar argued that the policy was no longer practical
and proposed a new policy of reasonably develop large
cities, actively developing medium-sized and small cities,
greatly promoting the development of carefully chosen
towns.

6.6.8. Studies on Semi-Urbanization in China

In 2004, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Department of
Urban and Rural Development of the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS and
Asia and Pacic Research Center of Stanford University
jointly applied for the sponsorship from Ford Foundation
on their Studies on Semi-Urbanization in China. The World
Bank also sponsored the research project. The purpose of
the project is to have a better understanding on semiurbanization in China through international comparative
analysis and case studies, especially the dynamic process
and mechanism of employment, environment, and social
service since the 1990s, analyzing the signicance and
impact of semi-urbanization on the overall Chinese urbanization and the evolution of urban spatial structure, proposing corresponding suggestions on policy making.

134

Chaolin Gu et al.

6.6.9. International Conference on Chinese

Urbanization and Transport Development
During 25 August 2007, the China Planning Network (CPN),
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), and Xinhua
News Agency Outlook Weekly jointly organized in Beijing
International Conference on Chinese Urbanization and
Transport Development. Participants include the representatives from international organizations such as the World
Bank, Asian Development Bank, Commission of European
Union, Alliance for Global Sustainability, Harvard US-China
Economic Interaction Forum, Rockefeller Foundation, the
Energy Foundation, as well as more than 100 experts,
scholars and ofcials from MIT, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, Imperial College London, London
University, London Olympic Committee, Transport Committee for Metro-London, Volpe Center, Chicago Public Transport Operation Bureau, Citibank, Hong Kong Planning
Department, Singapore Land Transport Authority, Tsinghua
University, Tongji University, Beijing Jiaotong University,
China Academy of City Planning and Design, Chinese Urban
Studies Society, Beijing Transport Committee, Beijing Subway, Guangzhou Transport Committee, Society of Automotive Engineers of China, and China Council for the Promotion
of International Trade. The seminar discussed the policies
for the development of urban transport, the urban transport
and a harmonious society, the investment and nancing for
construction and operation, the green transport and sustainable development, the land use and the integration
transport, the development of urban public transport, urban
transport planning, urban information technologies and
intellectual transport system, the policies and practice
on managing trafc jam, the construction and management
of large scale transport projects, and cross-disciplinary
transport education.

7.
7.1.

Conclusion and discussion

Features of studies on Chinese urbanization

In general, the studies on Chinese urbanization have

obtained achievements in following: (1) Theoretical studies
on Chinese urbanization by domestic and foreign scholars
are fruitful. Firstly, they concluded on the mutual promotion of economic transition and urbanization. As early as the
1980s, scholars found the impact of agricultural reforms and
opening-up policies on the economic and urban transition in
the Pearl River Delta Area. Secondly, scholars found a new
form of urbanization, that is, from bottom to top and deagriculturalization or simply rural urbanization (Ma and Lin,
1993). The Asian model of urbanization is the concept of
desakota proposed by McGee (1991), which was deemed
appropriate to describe the urbanization progress in the
Pearl River Delta Area (Lin, 1997). Thirdly, some scholars
held that a dual urbanization occurred during the period of
reform and opening-up, that is the government-guided
urbanization (the growth of non-agricultural population)
and the spontaneous urbanization, i.e., the rural urbanization based on rural enterprises and the moving of oating
population) (Shen et al., 2002, 2006; Shen, 2006a). During
19802000, the growth of urban population was caused by

the dual urbanization, including the growth of non-agricultural population in cities, the growth of oating population,
while the rural urbanization was driven by the development
of rural enterprises. As a result, China remains to be a
dualistic society without a complete urban and rural
integration. (2) The studies on China urbanization made
by domestic scholars have distinct practical purposes. In
comparison with foreign scholars, Chinese researchers are
more practical in their studies focusing on theories, guidelines, and paths of Chinese urbanization (Feng, 1983; Zhou,
1984; Deng, 2000; Zhong, 2000), and their conclusions serve
as the foundation for the state to make policies on urban
development. For example, the central government proposed in 1978 the principles of controlling the development of large cities and promoting the development of
small cities and towns, the State Council approved and
distributed in 1980 the Minutes of National City Planning
Working Meeting, proposing the principles of controlling
the size of large cities, reasonably developing medium-sized
cities, actively developing small cities, the state promulgated the Law on City Planning in 1990, clearly regulating in
Article 4 that the state will carry out the principles of
strictly controlling the size of large cities and reasonably
developing medium-sized and small cities, promoting the
construction of a reasonable distribution structure of both
productivity and population; all these are closely related
to the researches on Chinese urbanization. (3) Interaction
between domestic and foreign scholars and the application
of international experience in China. After the Second
World War, the rapid urbanization developed in developing
countries, while classical western theories on urbanization
couldnt explain all the phenomena in China (Yan, Lin and
Xu, 1994). China is a developing county in the world and a
socialist country as well; its urbanization has distinct Chinese
characteristics accordingly. There are many approaches
including the classical and the traditional approach, the topto-bottom development approach, the historical approach,
the dependency theories, the bottom-to-top development
model, and post-modernist approach (Gu, 2003), all managed
to make reasonable explanations on the urbanization in
developing countries, while the researches on Chinese urbanization provide important foundation for the verication of
these theories. At the same time, the Chinese urbanization
also raised new questions for the studies of urbanization in the
world. For example, the features of urbanization in the Pearl
River Delta Area are quite different from those of the
desakota model in Asia (Sit and Yang, 1997a, b, c), therefore,
its dynamics, mechanism and spatial features shall be further
explored.

7.2.

Problems facing Chinese urbanization

The continuous and rapid economic growth as well as

extensive and a large amount of population movement in
China make the issue of urbanization increasingly important. To sum up, the main problems in the eld include:
(1) The studies on the basic concepts concerning Chinese
urbanization. The rapid urbanization in China make the
classical concept ambiguous and the term needs to be
redened based on the actual situations, including the
denition of such concepts of city and countryside,

Progress in research on Chinese urbanization

designated city and designated town, the adjustment made
to administrative division, the division of urban areas, and
the concepts of urban population and urban land. (2) The
studies on Chinese urbanization model. The rapid growth of
population has become the leading factor restricting Chinese urbanization, especially the amount of surplus agricultural products, the capacity and resources as well as job
vacancies available for the expansion of production, making
it an urgent task to understand the basic rules of rural
surplus labor transfer, of oating population and of population moving; another important issue is to study how to
develop an urbanization model with resource-conserving,
environment-friendly, ecologically civilized in China on the
basis of limited resource and environment conditions.
(3) The studies on the rules of Chinese urbanization,
including its dynamic mechanism, the relationship between
urbanization and industrial development, and the development stage of Chinees urbanization. (4) The studies on the
space of Chinese urbanization. The rapid development of
urban economic areas changed the focus of studies from
original size and structure of urban system to the spatial and
functional structure of the urban system, as well as urban
agglomeration, city group, and metropolitan areas. While at
the same time, the expansion of urban agglomeration
intensied the negative impact of urbanization on society,
creating many problems of the disorder of urban spatial
structure, the over-populated and the high density of
buildings in downtown areas, the trafc jam, the lack of
housing, the pollution of environment, and the deterioration of ecological environment, making the studies on
urbanization increasingly important. Furthermore, the
uneven growth of urbanization space results in the increasingly polarization among different regions in China, and this
is another important issue to be studied. (5) The studies on
public policies on urbanization in China: the Chinese urbanization also faces a series of institutional obstacles, including the
household registration and management system, the social
security system, the employment system, and the land
transfer system, etc.

7.3. Existing problems of studies on Chinese

urbanization
The studies on Chinese urbanization have the following
problems: (1) The concept of urbanization is ambiguous and
the basic statistics is inadequate. The inconsistency on the
concept of cities and relevant statistics resulted in the
difference in understanding urbanization and in the application of materials. As for the actual application of data, the
broad and narrow connotations of urbanization are used
interchangeably, resulting in the mistakes and low credibility of statistics, materials, and conclusion. (2) Scholars
emphasized the studies on phenomena instead of the
fundamental theories. Chinese scholars focused on the
application of foreign theories on urbanization and practices
in Chinese urbanization, and on the practice of developed
areas and areas growing rapidly, instead of exploring
theories and methologies. The studies on Chinese urbanization created several theoretical assumptions, falling into
several categories of anti-urbanism or de-urbanism, industry/strategy-oriented urbanization, dual system of urban

135
center and rural-urban balance development, industrialization and urban-based approach, as well as comprehensive
approach, but these studies have no effective mathematical
model to simulate and verify these theories. (3) Most studies
focus on regional urbanization instead of on national and
global background. The studies on Chinese urbanization are
case studies at provincial level, on natural geographical
regions, or economic geographical regions, especially the
process, features, and dynamic mechanism of urbanization
in developed areas including the Pearl River Delta Area and
the Yangtze River Delta Area after the reform and openingup. Most research articles focus on provincial urbanization
in coastal areas in East China and on regional or national
economy, culture, society, natural geographical environment instead of on the impact of globalization on Chinese
urbanization.

7.4.

Prospect of research on Chinese urbanization

According to western classical studies on urbanization,

three factors affect urbanization: (1) urban distribution
and development is decided by population base; (2) the
grading redistribution of surplus social products decides the
hierarchy of the urban system; (3) trade, merchantilism and
capitalism decide the development of a city (Potter and
Lioyd-Evans, 1998). During the Industrial Revolution of the
18th to 19th Century, western developed countries interweaved industrialization, economic growth and rapid urbanization; later on, the colonial spatial expansion kept
promoting urbanization in underdeveloped areas. In the
1950s, population, capital, and technologies in western
developed countries moved rapidly to large cities and their
surrounding areas, while the tendency of suburbanization
appeared on population, industries, and service sector in
large cities, with the appearance of many new cities in the
urban fringes of large cities.
It is noted that the urbanization process in western
developed countries has always been in accordance with
the urban and rural population transition and economic
structure changes, in a gradually changing and smooth
Davis Urbanization Curve (Davis, 1965). Accordingly,
western scholars constructed western urbanization theories
on the framework of social surplus product theories.
After the Second World War, with high natural growth of
population, rapid urbanization, lagging industrialization,
urban poverty and population explosion, the urbanization
process in developing countries is obviously different from
that in western developed countries (Bairoch, 1975). For a
long period of time, the theories on urbanization in the
Third World have been controlled by Europe-centered
theories and are dependent urbanization theories constructed on the basis of dependency theories (Frank,
1967; Castells, 1977; Gilbert and Gugler, 1982). To sum
up, there are six main theoretical frameworks of the studies
on western urbanization (Gu, 2003): (1) classical-traditional
approach: dual structure theory (Prebish, 1950; Perroux,
1950; Myrdal, 1957); (2) top-to-bottom development model:
imbalanced development theories (Richardson, 1977, 1980),
modernization theories (Hettne, 1994; Soja, 1974; Gould,
1970; Riddell, 1970), decentralization theories (Hudson,
1969; Berry, 1973a, b); (3) historical approach: accumulation

136
theory (Myrdal, 1957), core-peripheral model (Friedmann,
1966); (4) radical political economics approach: dependency
theory (Frank, 1967), surplus social values accumulation
theory (Harvey, 1973; Castells, 1977), world system theory
(Wallerstein, 1974, 1980; Taylor, 1986); (5) bottom-to-top
model: development starting from the bottom (Stohr, 1981);
(6) post-modernist approach (Urry, 1990; Harvey, 1989;
Robins, 1989; Massey, 1991; Kaarsholm, 1995).
After three decades of development since the adoption of
reform and opening-up policies, China has undergone great
changes in social, economic, cultural, and market conditions. At the same time, the regional gap in urbanization
also increases on a continuous basis. Since China is in the
transitional stage from planned economy to market-oriented
economy, it is hard to directly introduce the theories on
urbanization developed within the conditions in the developed capitalist countries to China. Also, the theories on
urban development created under the condition of the
socialist planned economy can no longer be applied either,
resulting in a series of scientic problems during the process
of promoting urbanization. The background for urbanization
progress in modern China is much more complicated than
that in western countries and most developing countries.
On the one hand, the continuous and rapid economic growth
and industrialization plays an increasingly important role
in promoting urbanization; on the other hand, millions of
surplus rural laborers move between urban and rural areas
and among different regions, serving as a leading factor
promoting urbanization. At the same time, globalization and
informatization play an increasingly important role on the
urbanization in coastal developed areas (Gu, 2004). In this
sense, the urbanization theories created by western scholars
for developed or developing countries are not applicable to
the actual conditions in China nor to the studies on urbanization
(Gu, 2003). It is necessary to set up a theoretical framework for
the studies of Chinese urbanization with distinct Chinese
characteristics.
Since the 1980s, globalization has progressed extremely
rapidly. With the free ow of main production elements in
the world, the gradual formation of new international
division of labor, the establishment of a global market
system, the global industrial restructuring and shift, and
the formation of new global industrial distribution, the
space of urbanization has changed greatly. At the same
time, globalization promotes the competition for capital in
different regions; it becomes therefore a common requirement of a favorable business environment featuring loose
control, privatization, preferential taxation policies, subsidies, and the loosening of control on the environment
(Lauria, 1997). The process of economic globalization has a
profound and extensive impact on the urbanization progress
in the world (Castells, 1989, 1994). According to research,
the rapid growth of leading cities in the world is closely
related to two global processes (Chase-Dunn, 1984, 1989),
the one is the economic globalization (Daniels, 1991), and
the other is the rapid growth of the service sector (Batten,
1995). The trend of urbanization in the world shows that the
large cities, especially the world cities (global cities) grow
rapidly (Sassen, 1991, 1994).
Along with globalization since the 1980s, the distribution
of the world industries has changed greatly, with the
industrial centers moving from the old industrial countries,

Chaolin Gu et al.
US, West Europe, and Japan, to Asia and Pacic Region,
Latin America, and other countries and regions with rapid
industrialization. The world economic growth is accompanied by the development of large cities, and globalization is
remolding the global urban system, greatly promoting the
growth of cities engaging in the process of globalization,
while those further away from the process generally decline
(UN-Habitat, 1997). China becomes the leading manufacturing base in the world and the target country for foreign
direct investment in response to economic globalization and
the world urbanization wave; the rising of local economies,
the strengthening of local governmental control, the resistance and changes of local social structure, these make the
Chinese urbanization different from that in developed
countries, newly rising industrialized countries, and from
the previous one in China, which posed new challenges on
both western classical urbanization theories and the
assumptions on urbanization in traditional developing countries. In terms of the new trend of urbanization in the
world, the relevant studies in China based on the framework
of globalization are few and have just begun.
The studies on urbanization under the background of
globalization focus on the following issues. (1) The globalization of cities, that is, the global cities, they serve as the
command and control centers in the world and the
headquarters for a many nancial companies, production
service industries, and multi-national companies, as well as
the platform for interaction activities in extensive elds of
politics, art, and culture. Each and every city connects with
the world clients and markets, suppliers and competitors,
consumers and producers through the gigantic network of
investment, trade, migrants, and electronic communications. As the labor-intensive link in the world commodity
chain, the global cities reect the trend of high technologies and high value-added functions gathering in global
centers while the low value-added functions gather in
marginalized areas in the world. The governments of the
global cities are forced to contribute a large amount of
public resources to create a construction environment for
global investment and to produce a series of key policy
projects, making cities the group customers of economic
agglomeration and of the world market as well as the
platform for political community (Douglass, 2000). The
globalized urbanization has two features: the globalization
of urban areas and the fragmentation of urban society and
political bodies. (2) The new spatial order. The urbanization
under globalization is creating a new spatial order, just like
post-Fordist cities serving as the source of cultural and
technological innovation, the modularization of innovative
places and industrial structure and the tendency of network
structural and geographical agglomeration (Marcotullio,
2003). In an era of globalization, the connection among
different cities become closer, and a multi-polar and multilevel global city network is taking shape.
The school of dependency theories and the school of the
world system believe that globalization and foreign capital
have negative impact on the urbanization in developing
countries. The early researchers (Harvey, 1975) held that
foreign capital resulted in the dependent urbanization
in developing countries. Armstrong and McGee (1985),
Friedmann (1986), Fuchs and Pernia (1987) argued that
the urban system, urbanization, and the spatial structure in

Progress in research on Chinese urbanization

developing countries became increasingly dependent on the
role they played during the process of capitalist accumulation in industrial countries, making it difcult for these
countries to get away from dependent urbanization under
the new global order. The world system approach believed
that foreign investment would reduce the land resources
available for farmers, forcing population move to cities,
that investment in urban areas created industries attracting
rural migrants, and that the recent world economic development might profoundly change the opinions on the
urbanization and development of the Third World. Many
recent studies show that the world debt crisis and the
pressure from the IMF encouraged overurbanization,
restrained economic growth and material life quality,
increased political protest and domestic turmoil (Bradshaw
and Noonan, 1997). Globalization benets the recipients
through the transfer of technologies and information on
trade and investment, and also reduces the urbanization in
countries developing rapidly through overlapping management and environment issues, creating new challenges as
well. Furthermore, polarization occurred in these elds due
to the adjustments made to the state and local policies
(Cook, 2000; Marcotullio, 2003).
Today, world urbanization enters a special stage with
radical changes of political and economic background.
During such a special period of time, urbanization picked
up new features of information cities, multi-centered
metropolitan areas, and the splitting of urban space,
making it increasingly hard for regular urbanization models,
the classical sector model and concentric zone theories, to
explain the city landscape in development countries and the
overurbanization process in developing countries. Recently,
Knox and McCarthy proposed that urbanization not only
refers to the increase of population living and working in
cities and towns, it also refers to the changes in economy,
population, politics, culture, technology, environment, and
society caused by a series of closely related changing
processes. Urbanization is affected by geographical conditions and natural resources and results in changes in theland
use model, social ecology (the social and neighboring
population structure), architectural environment, and
urbanism. Governmental policies, the revision of laws, city
planning, and urban management might nally solve the
problems occurring during the urbanization progress, and
different factors affect the dynamic social balance and will
nally promote the overall progress of urbanization (Knox
and McCarthy, 2005). Urbanization progresses rapidly in
China with the growth of mega-cities, mega-city regions
and mega-regions, requiring the researchers to study from
multidimensional perspectives the progress in economic
system, internal factors, external factors, social system
and social spatial structure, land use and urban spatial
structure, as well as social problem with fast urbanization
processes.

Acknowledgements
Wed like to acknowledge the funding of the Natural Science
Foundation of China (40971092 and 40435013). Wed also
like to thank many scholars who helped with this paper.
Firstly, Prof Gu wants to express sincere gratitude to He

137
Nianru from the Shanghai Headquarters of the Peoples Bank
of China for providing Theoretical Studies on Modern
Urbanization in China (1979-2005), a PhD thesis. His gratitude also goes to Zhang Qin from the City Planning Division
of the State Ministry of Construction and Cai Jianming from
Geography and Resource Institute of China Academy of
Sciences for providing valuable materials on the studies of
Chinese urbanization. He thanks Leng Shuying from the
Department of Geography at the National Natural Science
Foundation of China for providing the information on the
urbanization research projects sponsored by the National
Natural Science Foundation of China. The paper was developed with the help of the editorial departments of City
Planning Review, City Planning Forum, Urban Planning
International, Planners, Urban Problems, Urban Studies,
Acta Geographica Sinica, Scientia Geographica Sinica, Geographical Research, Economic Geography, and Human Geography, as well as the help of Wang Wentong, Wang Yajuan,
Sun Zhitao, Liu Fang, Xin Zhangping, Yang Chunzhi, He
Shujin, Tong Lianjun, Gao Songfan, Wei Xiao, and Li
Jiuquan. Last he is grateful to Anthony Yeh from the
University of Hong Kong and Shen Jianfa from the Chinese
University of Hong Kong for providing materials on overseas
studies of Chinese urbanization. Also he thanks Hu Xuwei,
Mao Qizhi, Gu Wenxuan, and Li Xun for their comments on
the draft paper. Prof. Cook thanks his university for the
regular opportunity to visit Beijing on an annual eld
course, and for the research activities such as this one that
have developed as a result.

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149
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